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"This paper considers the effects of health conditions in childhood on an individual's mortality risks as an adult. It examines epidemiologic evidence on some of the major mechanisms expected to create a linkage between childhood and adult mortality and reviews demographic and epidemiologic studies for evidence of the hypothesized linkages....Many empirical studies support the notion that childhood conditions play a major role in adult mortality, but only in the case of respiratory tuberculosis has the demographic importance of a specific mechanism been established by cohort studies. One's date and place of birth also appear to be persistently associated with risks of adult death in a wide variety of circumstances. An individual's height, perhaps the single best indicator of nutritional and disease environment in childhood, has recently been linked to adult mortality, especially from cardiovascular diseases. Further research is needed, however, before causal mechanisms can be identified."

This paper investigates the social and economic circumstances of childhood that predict the probability of survival to age 85 among African-Americans. It uses a unique study design in which survivors are linked to their records in U.S. Censuses of 1900 and 1910. A control group of age and race-matched children is drawn from Public Use Samples for these censuses. It concludes that the factors most predictive of survival are farm background, having literate parents, and living in a two-parent household. Results support the interpretation that death risks are positively correlated over the life cycle.

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This article demonstrates that over the period 1948-2003, sex differences in mortality in the age range 50-84 widened and then narrowed on a cohort basis rather than on a period basis. The cohort with the maximum excess of male mortality was born shortly after the turn of the century. Three separate data sources suggest that the turnaround in sex mortality differences is consistent with sex differences in cigarette smoking by cohort. An age-period-cohort model reveals a highly significant effect of smoking histories on men's and women's mortality. Combined with recent changes in smoking patterns, the model suggests that sex differences in mortality will narrow dramatically in coming decades.

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We provide a simple and straightforward method for estimating the proportion of deaths attributable to smoking in high-income countries. Our results demonstrate that smoking has played a central role in levels, trends and international differences in mortality over the past half century.