Early Childhood Health Shocks and Adult Wellbeing: Evidence from Wartime Britain

Abstract

A growing literature argues that early environments affecting childhood health may influence significantly later-life health and socioeconomic status. In this article, we present new evidence on the relationship between infant mortality and later-life outcomes using variation in infant mortality in England and Wales at the onset of World War II. We exploit the variation in infant mortality across birth cohorts and regions to estimate associations between infant mortality and adult outcomes, such as health, disability, and employment. Our findings suggest that exposure to a higher infant mortality environment is significantly associated with higher likelihood of reporting poor health, a higher likelihood of reporting a disability, a lower probability of employment, and a higher probability of reporting no earned income. We also find that the effects of the infant health environment do not become manifest until after age 55.

A Unified Model of Cohort Mortality for Economic Analysis

“…32 These results also suggest it is not possible to identify the effects of in-utero shocks with health data for adolescents or young adults only. Schiman et al (2017), who study the effects of experiencing WWII in utero and early childhood, find that its effects on health, disability, and employment among adults are not visible for young adults, but grow with age, as predicted here.…”

Atmospheric Pollution, Health, and Height in Late Nineteenth Century Britain

“…Infant or child mortality in the locality during childhood is often used as an explanatory variable for adult outcomes, including height. Most historical studies find a strong negative relationship with height, consistent with a scarring effect of childhood conditions (Quintana-Domeque, Bozzoli, and Bosch 2011; Hatton 2011; Schiman, Kaestner, and Lo Sasso 2017). 31 As different causes of mortality will be associated with different elements of the disease environment, distinguishing between causes of mortality should help to identify the epidemiological channels through which the local environment affects height.…”

Developmental Origins of Health Inequality

“…However, famine studies have been criticised, on the grounds that those particular circumstances must have also caused severe stress (and when occurring during a war, loss of material resources), making it difficult to separately identify the effect of undernutrition. Indeed, studies which have examined more broadly the impact of experiencing a war in early life (B¨orsch-Supan and Ju¨rges, 2011; Kesternich et al, 2014;Schiman et al, 2017;Akbulut-Yuksel, 2017;Havari and Peracchi, 2017) have also found similar adverse long-term consequences. 15 Nonetheless, the negative impacts of wars appear to affect to the same extent both men and women, and individuals belonging to different socioeconomic strata.…”