Babies of the War: The Effect of War Exposure Early in Life on Mortality Throughout Life

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that circumstances very early in our lives, and particularly during pregnancy, can affect our health for the remainder of life. Studies that have looked at this relationship have often used extreme situations, such as famines that occurred during wartime. Here we investigate whether less extreme situations during World War II also affected later-life mortality for cohorts born in Belgium, France, The Netherlands, and Norway. We argue that these occupied countries experienced a considerable deterioration in daily life situations and show that this resulted in strongly increased mortality rates and lower probabilities of survival until age 55 among civilian populations who had been prenatally exposed to wartime circumstances. However, this mortality effect among the prenatally exposed is entirely concentrated in the first years of life, particularly infanthood. Once we condition on having survived the first years of life, those who had been prenatally exposed do not have higher mortality rates. This suggests that "culling" is important and that effects found in earlier studies may have been biased downward substantially.

Why People Born During World War II are Healthier

“…For the number of GP visits, we take the value corresponding to the 90 th percentile. Next, we regress 9 Similar results were shown in Lindeboom & Van Ewijk (2015). They argue that the pattern of "culling" (i.e.…”

The Long Arm of Conflict: How Timing Shapes the Impact of Childhood Exposure to War

“…Parallel to this trend, the lit era ture linking war and health has increased sub stan tially in recent years. This grow ing body of research has shown that child hood expo sure to armed con flict has per sistent neg a tive effects across the life course (Akbulut-Yuksel 2017;Islam et al 2017;Kesternich et al 2015;Lindeboom and Ewijk 2015). However, as shown here, a life course per spec tive empha siz ing the dif fer en tial tim ing of expo sure dem on strates that such adverse health effects can be quite het ero ge neous.…”

“…First, the data do not pro vide a direct measure of indi vid ual expo sure to armed con flict. As a proxy, we used a con tex tual approach to mea sure con flict expo sure, a com mon approach in the lit er a ture (Akbulut-Yuksel 2014; Kesternich et al 2014;Lindeboom and Ewijk 2015). We could deter mine only that the respon dent lived in an area at a par tic u lar time with a documented prox im ity to the con flict.…”

“…An impor tant thread within crit i cal period research has inves ti gated how mate rial and nutri tional dep ri va tion dur ing early life can lead to per ma nent phys i o log i cal adap ta tions to the struc ture and func tion ing of impor tant body sys tems, includ ing per ma nently ele vated blood pres sure and dysregulation of glu cose and lipid metab o lism (Kuh and Ben Shlomo 2004;Lindeboom and Ewijk 2015;Scholte et al 2015). Such phys i o log i cal adap ta tions result in higher pro pen si ties for devel op ing car dio vas cu lar and cere bro vas cu lar dis ease, Type 2 dia be tes, and respi ra tory dis eases.…”

“…This work has exam ined a wide array of early-life condi tions, includ ing expo sure to armed con flict. Growing up amid con flict is asso ci ated with an increased like li hood of devel oping a wide array of health con di tions, includ ing car dio vas cu lar dis ease, stroke, dia betes, men tal health prob lems, and low self-rated health (Akbulut-Yuksel 2017;Akresh et al 2012;Alastalo et al 2009;Kesternich et al 2014Kesternich et al , 2015Lindeboom and Ewijk 2015). Studies have found that child hood expo sure to con texts of war and con flict also adversely impacts cog ni tive devel op ment and human cap i tal accu mu la tion through the inter rup tion of school ing (Chamarbagwala and Morán 2011;Ichino and Winter-Ebmer 2004;Kesternich et al 2014;Shemyakina 2011).…”