Early Life Income Shocks and Old-Age Cause-Specific Mortality
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Abstract
This paper investigates the causal relationship between income shocks during the first years of life and adulthood mortality due to specific causes of death. Using all death records in the United States during 1968-2004 for individuals who were born in the first half of the 20th century, we document a sizable and statistically significant association between income shocks early in life, proxied by GDP per capita fluctuations, and old age cause-specific mortality. Conditional on individual characteristics and controlling for a broad array of current and early-life conditions, we find that a 1 percent decrease in the aggregate business cycle in the year of birth is associated with 2.2, 2.3, 3.1, 3.7, 0.9, and 2.1 percent increase in the likelihood of mortality in old ages due to malignant neoplasms, Diabetes Mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, Influenza, chronic respiratory diseases, and all other diseases, respectively.
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References
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Almond, D., and Mazumder, B. (2005). The 1918 influenza pandemic and subsequent health outcomes: An analysis of SIPP data. American Economic Review, 95(2), 258–262.
Almond, D., and Mazumder, B. (2011). Health capital and the prenatal environment: The effect of Ramadan observance during pregnancy. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3(4), 56–85. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.3.4.56
Almond, D., Mazumder, B., and Van Ewijk, R. (2014). In utero Ramadan exposure and children's academic performance. The Economic Journal, 125(589), 1501–1533.
Banerjee, A., Duflo, E., Postel-Vinay, G., and Watts, T. (2010). Long-run health impacts of income shocks: Wine and phylloxera in nineteenth-century France. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(4), 714–728.
Barker, D. J. (1990). The fetal and infant origins of adult disease. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 301(6761), 1111.
Bhalotra, S., Karlsson, M., and Nilsson, T. (2017). Infant health and longevity: Evidence from a historical intervention in Sweden. Journal of the European Economic Association, 15(5), 1101–1157.
Bloom, D. E., Canning, D., and Sevilla, J. (2004). The effect of health on economic growth: A production function approach. World Development, 32(1), 1–13.
Case, A., Fertig, A., and Paxson, C. (2005). The lasting impact of childhood health and circumstance. Journal of Health Economics, 24(2), 365–389.
Chay, K. Y., and Greenstone, M. (2003). The impact of air pollution on infant mortality: evidence from geographic variation in pollution shocks induced by a recession. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(3), 1121–1167.
Coile, C. C., Levine, P. B., and McKnight, R. (2014). Recessions, older workers, and longevity: How long are recessions good for your health? American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 6(3), 92–119.
Costa, D. L. (2015). Health and the economy in the united states from 1750 to the present. In Journal of Economic Literature (Vol. 53, Issue 3, pp. 503–570). American Economic Association. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.53.3.503
Currie, J., and Moretti, E. (2003). Mother’s education and the intergenerational transmission of human capital: Evidence from college openings. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(4), 1495–1532. https://doi.org/10.1162/003355303322552856
Currie, Janet. (2011). Inequality at birth: Some causes and consequences. American Economic Review, 101(3), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.3.1
Currie, Janet, Duque, V., and Garfinkel, I. (2015). The Great Recession and mothers’ health. The Economic Journal, 125(588), F311--F346.
Cutler, D. M., Miller, G., and Norton, D. M. (2007). Evidence on early-life income and late-life health from America’s Dust Bowl era. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(33), 13244–13249.
Cutler, D., and Miller, G. (2005). The role of public health improvements in health advances: The twentieth-century United States. Demography, 42(1), 1–22.
Den Berg, G. J., Doblhammer-Reiter, G., and Christensen, K. (2011). Being born under adverse economic conditions leads to a higher cardiovascular mortality rate later in life: Evidence based on individuals born at different stages of the business cycle. Demography, 48(2), 507–530.
Den Berg, G. J., and Gupta, S. (2015). The role of marriage in the causal pathway from economic conditions early in life to mortality. Journal of Health Economics, 40, 141–158.
Den Berg, G. J., Lindeboom, M., and Portrait, F. (2006). Economic conditions early in life and individual mortality. American Economic Review, 96(1), 290–302.
Eaton, J., Kortum, S., Neiman, B., and Romalis, J. (2016). Trade and the global recession. American Economic Review, 106(11), 3401–3438.
Elder, T. E., Goddeeris, J. H., and Haider, S. J. (2016). Racial and ethnic infant mortality gaps and the role of socio-economic status. Labour Economics, 43, 42–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2016.04.001
Ferrie, J., and Rolf, K. (2011). Socioeconomic status in childhood and health after age 70: A new longitudinal analysis for the US, 1895--2005. Explorations in Economic History, 48(4), 445–460.
Flores, M., and Kalwij, A. (2014). The associations between early life circumstances and later life health and employment in Europe. Empirical Economics, 47(4), 1251–1282.
Fogel, R. W. (1994). Economic growth, population theory and physiology: The bearing of long-term processes on the making of economic policy. The American Economic Review, 84(3), 369–395.
Frijters, P., Hatton, T. J., Martin, R. M., and Shields, M. A. (2010). Childhood economic conditions and length of life: Evidence from the UK Boyd Orr cohort, 1937--2005. Journal of Health Economics, 29(1), 39–47.
Frijters, P., Johnston, D. W., Shah, M., and Shields, M. A. (2013). Intrahousehold resource allocation: Do parents reduce or reinforce child ability gaps? Demography, 50(6), 2187–2208.
Gerdtham, U.-G., and Johannesson, M. (2004). Absolute income, relative income, income inequality, and mortality. Journal of Human Resources, 39(1), 228–247.
Grimm, M. (2011). Does inequality in health impede economic growth? Oxford Economic Papers, 63(3), 448–474.
Hodrick, R. J., and Prescott, E. C. (1997). Postwar US business cycles: An empirical investigation. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, 1–16.
Hoynes, H., Schanzenbach, D. W., and Almond, D. (2016). Long-run impacts of childhood access to the safety net. American Economic Review, 106(4), 903–934.
Isen, A., Rossin-Slater, M., and Walker, W. R. (2017). Every breath you take every dollar you'll make: The long-term consequences of the clean air act of 1970. Journal of Political Economy, 125(3), 848–902.
Jacks, D. S. (2013). From boom to bust: A typology of real commodity prices in the long run. Cliometrica, 1–20.
Jordà, Ò., Schularick, M., and Taylor, A. M. (2017). Macrofinancial history and the new business cycle facts. NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 31(1), 213–263.
Lawlor, D. A., Sterne, J. A. C., Tynelius, P., Davey Smith, G., and Rasmussen, F. (2006). Association of childhood socioeconomic position with cause-specific mortality in a prospective record linkage study of 1,839,384 individuals. American Journal of Epidemiology, 164(9), 907–915.
Majid, M. F. (2015). The persistent effects of in utero nutrition shocks over the life cycle: Evidence from Ramadan fasting. Journal of Development Economics, 117, 48–57.
McInerney, M., and Mellor, J. M. (2012). Recessions and seniors’ health, health behaviors, and healthcare use: Analysis of the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey. Journal of Health Economics, 31(5), 744–751.
Miller, D. L., Page, M. E., Stevens, A. H., and Filipski, M. (2009). Why are recessions good for your health? American Economic Review, 99(2), 122–127.
Miller, G., and Urdinola, B. P. (2010). Cyclicality, mortality, and the value of time: The case of coffee price fluctuations and child survival in Colombia. Journal of Political Economy, 118(1), 113–155.
Montez, J. K., Hummer, R. A., Hayward, M. D., Woo, H., and Rogers, R. G. (2011). Trends in the educational gradient of US adult mortality from 1986 through 2006 by race, gender, and age group. Research on Aging, 33(2), 145–171.
Myrskylä, M. (2010a). The effects of shocks in early life mortality on later life expectancy and mortality compression: A cohort analysis. Demographic Research, 22, 289–320.
Myrskylä, M. (2010b). The relative effects of shocks in early-and later-life conditions on mortality. Population and Development Review, 36(4), 803–829.
Myrskylä, M., Mehta, N. K., and Chang, V. W. (2013). Early life exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic and old-age mortality by cause of death. American Journal of Public Health, 103(7), e83--e90.
NoghaniBehambari, H., Noghani, F., and Tavassoli, N. (2020). Child support enforcement and child mortality. Available at SSRN 3668744.
Noghanibehambari, H., Noghani, F., Tavassoli, N., and Toranji, M. (2020). Long-term effects of in utero exposure to ’The Year Without A Summer’. Available at SSRN 3668739.
Noghanibehambari, H., and Salari, M. (2020). Health benefits of social insurance. Health Economics.
Olafsson, A. (2016). Household financial distress and initial endowments: Evidence from the 2008 financial crisis. Health Economics, 25, 43–56. https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.3426
Page, M., Schaller, J., and Simon, D. (2017). The effects of aggregate and gender-specific labor demand shocks on child health. Journal of Human Resources, 0716--8045R.
Rao, N. (2016). The impact of macroeconomic conditions in childhood on adult labor market outcomes. Economic Inquiry, 54(3), 1425–1444.
Restrepo, B. J. (2016). Parental investment responses to a low birth weight outcome: Who compensates and who reinforces? Journal of Population Economics, 29(4), 969–989.
Ruhm, C. J. (2000). Are recessions good for your health? The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(2), 617–650.
Ruhm, C. J. (2015). Recessions, healthy no more? Journal of Health Economics, 42, 17–28.
Satcher, D., Fryer Jr, G. E., McCann, J., Troutman, A., Woolf, S. H., and Rust, G. (2005). What if we were equal? A comparison of the black-white mortality gap in 1960 and 2000. Health Affairs, 24(2), 459–464.
Strand, B. H., and Kunst, A. (2006). Childhood socioeconomic position and cause-specific mortality in early adulthood. American Journal of Epidemiology, 165(1), 85–93.
Tapia Granados, J. A., and Ionides, E. L. (2017). Population health and the economy: Mortality and the Great Recession in Europe. Health Economics, 26(12), e219--e235.
Tavassoli, N., Noghanibehambari, H., Noghani, F., and Toranji, M. (2020). Upswing in industrial activity and infant mortality during late 19th century US. Journal of Environments, 6(1), 1–13.
Therneau, T. M., and Grambsch, P. M. (2013). Modeling survival data: Extending the Cox model. Springer Science and Business Media.
Van den Berg, G. J., Doblhammer-Reiter, G., and Christensen, K. (2011). Being born under adverse economic conditions leads to a higher cardiovascular mortality rate later in life: Evidence based on individuals born at different stages of the business cycle. Demography, 48(2), 507–530. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0021-8
Van Ewijk, R. (2011). Long-term health effects on the next generation of Ramadan fasting during pregnancy. Journal of Health Economics, 30(6), 1246–1260.
Yeung, G. Y. C., den Berg, G. J., Lindeboom, M., and Portrait, F. R. M. (2014). The impact of early-life economic conditionson cause-specific mortality during adulthood. Journal of Population Economics, 27(3), 895–919.
Yi, J., Heckman, J. J., Zhang, J., and Conti, G. (2015). Early health shocks, intra-household resource allocation and child outcomes. The Economic Journal, 125(588), F347--F371.
Almond, D., and Mazumder, B. (2005). The 1918 influenza pandemic and subsequent health outcomes: An analysis of SIPP data. American Economic Review, 95(2), 258–262.
Almond, D., and Mazumder, B. (2011). Health capital and the prenatal environment: The effect of Ramadan observance during pregnancy. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 3(4), 56–85. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.3.4.56
Almond, D., Mazumder, B., and Van Ewijk, R. (2014). In utero Ramadan exposure and children's academic performance. The Economic Journal, 125(589), 1501–1533.
Banerjee, A., Duflo, E., Postel-Vinay, G., and Watts, T. (2010). Long-run health impacts of income shocks: Wine and phylloxera in nineteenth-century France. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(4), 714–728.
Barker, D. J. (1990). The fetal and infant origins of adult disease. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 301(6761), 1111.
Bhalotra, S., Karlsson, M., and Nilsson, T. (2017). Infant health and longevity: Evidence from a historical intervention in Sweden. Journal of the European Economic Association, 15(5), 1101–1157.
Bloom, D. E., Canning, D., and Sevilla, J. (2004). The effect of health on economic growth: A production function approach. World Development, 32(1), 1–13.
Case, A., Fertig, A., and Paxson, C. (2005). The lasting impact of childhood health and circumstance. Journal of Health Economics, 24(2), 365–389.
Chay, K. Y., and Greenstone, M. (2003). The impact of air pollution on infant mortality: evidence from geographic variation in pollution shocks induced by a recession. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(3), 1121–1167.
Coile, C. C., Levine, P. B., and McKnight, R. (2014). Recessions, older workers, and longevity: How long are recessions good for your health? American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 6(3), 92–119.
Costa, D. L. (2015). Health and the economy in the united states from 1750 to the present. In Journal of Economic Literature (Vol. 53, Issue 3, pp. 503–570). American Economic Association. https://doi.org/10.1257/jel.53.3.503
Currie, J., and Moretti, E. (2003). Mother’s education and the intergenerational transmission of human capital: Evidence from college openings. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(4), 1495–1532. https://doi.org/10.1162/003355303322552856
Currie, Janet. (2011). Inequality at birth: Some causes and consequences. American Economic Review, 101(3), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.101.3.1
Currie, Janet, Duque, V., and Garfinkel, I. (2015). The Great Recession and mothers’ health. The Economic Journal, 125(588), F311--F346.
Cutler, D. M., Miller, G., and Norton, D. M. (2007). Evidence on early-life income and late-life health from America’s Dust Bowl era. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(33), 13244–13249.
Cutler, D., and Miller, G. (2005). The role of public health improvements in health advances: The twentieth-century United States. Demography, 42(1), 1–22.
Den Berg, G. J., Doblhammer-Reiter, G., and Christensen, K. (2011). Being born under adverse economic conditions leads to a higher cardiovascular mortality rate later in life: Evidence based on individuals born at different stages of the business cycle. Demography, 48(2), 507–530.
Den Berg, G. J., and Gupta, S. (2015). The role of marriage in the causal pathway from economic conditions early in life to mortality. Journal of Health Economics, 40, 141–158.
Den Berg, G. J., Lindeboom, M., and Portrait, F. (2006). Economic conditions early in life and individual mortality. American Economic Review, 96(1), 290–302.
Eaton, J., Kortum, S., Neiman, B., and Romalis, J. (2016). Trade and the global recession. American Economic Review, 106(11), 3401–3438.
Elder, T. E., Goddeeris, J. H., and Haider, S. J. (2016). Racial and ethnic infant mortality gaps and the role of socio-economic status. Labour Economics, 43, 42–54. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2016.04.001
Ferrie, J., and Rolf, K. (2011). Socioeconomic status in childhood and health after age 70: A new longitudinal analysis for the US, 1895--2005. Explorations in Economic History, 48(4), 445–460.
Flores, M., and Kalwij, A. (2014). The associations between early life circumstances and later life health and employment in Europe. Empirical Economics, 47(4), 1251–1282.
Fogel, R. W. (1994). Economic growth, population theory and physiology: The bearing of long-term processes on the making of economic policy. The American Economic Review, 84(3), 369–395.
Frijters, P., Hatton, T. J., Martin, R. M., and Shields, M. A. (2010). Childhood economic conditions and length of life: Evidence from the UK Boyd Orr cohort, 1937--2005. Journal of Health Economics, 29(1), 39–47.
Frijters, P., Johnston, D. W., Shah, M., and Shields, M. A. (2013). Intrahousehold resource allocation: Do parents reduce or reinforce child ability gaps? Demography, 50(6), 2187–2208.
Gerdtham, U.-G., and Johannesson, M. (2004). Absolute income, relative income, income inequality, and mortality. Journal of Human Resources, 39(1), 228–247.
Grimm, M. (2011). Does inequality in health impede economic growth? Oxford Economic Papers, 63(3), 448–474.
Hodrick, R. J., and Prescott, E. C. (1997). Postwar US business cycles: An empirical investigation. Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, 1–16.
Hoynes, H., Schanzenbach, D. W., and Almond, D. (2016). Long-run impacts of childhood access to the safety net. American Economic Review, 106(4), 903–934.
Isen, A., Rossin-Slater, M., and Walker, W. R. (2017). Every breath you take every dollar you'll make: The long-term consequences of the clean air act of 1970. Journal of Political Economy, 125(3), 848–902.
Jacks, D. S. (2013). From boom to bust: A typology of real commodity prices in the long run. Cliometrica, 1–20.
Jordà, Ò., Schularick, M., and Taylor, A. M. (2017). Macrofinancial history and the new business cycle facts. NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 31(1), 213–263.
Lawlor, D. A., Sterne, J. A. C., Tynelius, P., Davey Smith, G., and Rasmussen, F. (2006). Association of childhood socioeconomic position with cause-specific mortality in a prospective record linkage study of 1,839,384 individuals. American Journal of Epidemiology, 164(9), 907–915.
Majid, M. F. (2015). The persistent effects of in utero nutrition shocks over the life cycle: Evidence from Ramadan fasting. Journal of Development Economics, 117, 48–57.
McInerney, M., and Mellor, J. M. (2012). Recessions and seniors’ health, health behaviors, and healthcare use: Analysis of the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey. Journal of Health Economics, 31(5), 744–751.
Miller, D. L., Page, M. E., Stevens, A. H., and Filipski, M. (2009). Why are recessions good for your health? American Economic Review, 99(2), 122–127.
Miller, G., and Urdinola, B. P. (2010). Cyclicality, mortality, and the value of time: The case of coffee price fluctuations and child survival in Colombia. Journal of Political Economy, 118(1), 113–155.
Montez, J. K., Hummer, R. A., Hayward, M. D., Woo, H., and Rogers, R. G. (2011). Trends in the educational gradient of US adult mortality from 1986 through 2006 by race, gender, and age group. Research on Aging, 33(2), 145–171.
Myrskylä, M. (2010a). The effects of shocks in early life mortality on later life expectancy and mortality compression: A cohort analysis. Demographic Research, 22, 289–320.
Myrskylä, M. (2010b). The relative effects of shocks in early-and later-life conditions on mortality. Population and Development Review, 36(4), 803–829.
Myrskylä, M., Mehta, N. K., and Chang, V. W. (2013). Early life exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic and old-age mortality by cause of death. American Journal of Public Health, 103(7), e83--e90.
NoghaniBehambari, H., Noghani, F., and Tavassoli, N. (2020). Child support enforcement and child mortality. Available at SSRN 3668744.
Noghanibehambari, H., Noghani, F., Tavassoli, N., and Toranji, M. (2020). Long-term effects of in utero exposure to ’The Year Without A Summer’. Available at SSRN 3668739.
Noghanibehambari, H., and Salari, M. (2020). Health benefits of social insurance. Health Economics.
Olafsson, A. (2016). Household financial distress and initial endowments: Evidence from the 2008 financial crisis. Health Economics, 25, 43–56. https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.3426
Page, M., Schaller, J., and Simon, D. (2017). The effects of aggregate and gender-specific labor demand shocks on child health. Journal of Human Resources, 0716--8045R.
Rao, N. (2016). The impact of macroeconomic conditions in childhood on adult labor market outcomes. Economic Inquiry, 54(3), 1425–1444.
Restrepo, B. J. (2016). Parental investment responses to a low birth weight outcome: Who compensates and who reinforces? Journal of Population Economics, 29(4), 969–989.
Ruhm, C. J. (2000). Are recessions good for your health? The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115(2), 617–650.
Ruhm, C. J. (2015). Recessions, healthy no more? Journal of Health Economics, 42, 17–28.
Satcher, D., Fryer Jr, G. E., McCann, J., Troutman, A., Woolf, S. H., and Rust, G. (2005). What if we were equal? A comparison of the black-white mortality gap in 1960 and 2000. Health Affairs, 24(2), 459–464.
Strand, B. H., and Kunst, A. (2006). Childhood socioeconomic position and cause-specific mortality in early adulthood. American Journal of Epidemiology, 165(1), 85–93.
Tapia Granados, J. A., and Ionides, E. L. (2017). Population health and the economy: Mortality and the Great Recession in Europe. Health Economics, 26(12), e219--e235.
Tavassoli, N., Noghanibehambari, H., Noghani, F., and Toranji, M. (2020). Upswing in industrial activity and infant mortality during late 19th century US. Journal of Environments, 6(1), 1–13.
Therneau, T. M., and Grambsch, P. M. (2013). Modeling survival data: Extending the Cox model. Springer Science and Business Media.
Van den Berg, G. J., Doblhammer-Reiter, G., and Christensen, K. (2011). Being born under adverse economic conditions leads to a higher cardiovascular mortality rate later in life: Evidence based on individuals born at different stages of the business cycle. Demography, 48(2), 507–530. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-011-0021-8
Van Ewijk, R. (2011). Long-term health effects on the next generation of Ramadan fasting during pregnancy. Journal of Health Economics, 30(6), 1246–1260.
Yeung, G. Y. C., den Berg, G. J., Lindeboom, M., and Portrait, F. R. M. (2014). The impact of early-life economic conditionson cause-specific mortality during adulthood. Journal of Population Economics, 27(3), 895–919.
Yi, J., Heckman, J. J., Zhang, J., and Conti, G. (2015). Early health shocks, intra-household resource allocation and child outcomes. The Economic Journal, 125(588), F347--F371.