IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v72y2011i6p1004-1015.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Infant mortality, season of birth and the health of older Puerto Rican adults

Author

Listed:
  • McEniry, Mary

Abstract

The increasing prevalence of heart disease and diabetes among aging populations in low and middle income countries leads to questions regarding the degree to which endogenous early life exposures (exposures in utero) are important determinants of these health conditions. We devised a test using infant mortality (IMR) to verify if season of birth is a good indicator of early life (in utero) conditions that precipitate adult onset of disease. We linked annual IMR at the municipality (municipio) level from the late 1920s to early 1940s with individual birth year and place using a representative sample of older Puerto Rican adults (n = 1447) from the Puerto Rican Elderly: Health Conditions (PREHCO) study. We estimated the effects of season of birth on adult heart disease and diabetes for all respondents and then for respondents according to whether they were born when IMR was lower or higher, controlling for age, gender, obesity, respondent's educational level, adult behavior (smoking and exercise) and other early life exposures (childhood health, knee height and childhood socioeconomic status (SES)). The pattern of effects suggests that season of birth reflects endogenous causes: (1) odds of heart disease and diabetes were strong and significant for those born during the lean season in years when IMR was lower; (2) effects remained consistent even after controlling for other childhood conditions and adult behavior; but (3) no seasonality effects on adult health for adults born when IMR was higher. We conclude that in this population of older Puerto Rican adults there is continued support that the timing of adverse endogenous (in utero) conditions such as poor nutrition and infectious diseases is associated with adult heart disease and diabetes. It will be important to test the validity of these findings in other similar populations in the developing world.

Suggested Citation

  • McEniry, Mary, 2011. "Infant mortality, season of birth and the health of older Puerto Rican adults," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(6), pages 1004-1015, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:72:y:2011:i:6:p:1004-1015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277-9536(10)00688-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kasey S. Buckles & Daniel M. Hungerman, 2013. "Season of Birth and Later Outcomes: Old Questions, New Answers," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(3), pages 711-724, July.
    2. Hodrick, Robert J & Prescott, Edward C, 1997. "Postwar U.S. Business Cycles: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16, February.
    3. Mary Mceniry & Alberto Palloni, 2010. "Early life exposures and the occurrence and timing of heart disease among the older adult Puerto Rican population," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 47(1), pages 23-43, February.
    4. Bengtsson, Tommy & Mineau, Geraldine P., 2009. "Early-life effects on socio-economic performance and mortality in later life: A full life-course approach using contemporary and historical sources," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(9), pages 1561-1564, May.
    5. van den Berg, Gerard J. & Doblhammer, Gabriele & Christensen, Kaare, 2009. "Exogenous determinants of early-life conditions, and mortality later in life," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(9), pages 1591-1598, May.
    6. repec:cai:popine:popu_p1999_11n1_0059 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marein, Brian, 2023. "Public health departments and the mortality transition in Latin America: Evidence from Puerto Rico," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    2. Miller, Ray, 2017. "Childhood Health and Prenatal Exposure to Seasonal Food Scarcity in Ethiopia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 350-376.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Janet Currie & Tom Vogl, 2013. "Early-Life Health and Adult Circumstance in Developing Countries," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 5(1), pages 1-36, May.
    2. Marco-Gracia, Francisco J. & Puche, Javier, 2021. "The association between male height and lifespan in rural Spain, birth cohorts 1835-1939," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    3. van Dijk, Ingrid K. & Nilsson, Therese & Quaranta, Luciana, 2024. "Disease exposure in infancy affects women's reproductive outcomes and offspring health in southern Sweden 1905–2000," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 347(C).
    4. Lin, Ming-Jen & Liu, Elaine M., 2014. "Does in utero exposure to Illness matter? The 1918 influenza epidemic in Taiwan as a natural experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 152-163.
    5. repec:pri:rpdevs:currie_vogl_ar is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Mikko Myrskylä, 2010. "The effects of shocks in early life mortality on later life expectancy and mortality compression: A cohort analysis," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 22(12), pages 289-320.
    7. Fritze, Thomas & Doblhammer, Gabriele & van den Berg, Gerard J., 2014. "Can individual conditions during childhood mediate or moderate the long-term cognitive effects of poor economic environments at birth?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 240-248.
    8. Thomas Baudin & Robert Stelter, 2022. "The rural exodus and the rise of Europe," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 365-414, September.
    9. Peter Phillips, 2010. "Two New Zealand pioneer econometricians," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(1), pages 1-26.
    10. Perron, Pierre & Wada, Tatsuma, 2016. "Measuring business cycles with structural breaks and outliers: Applications to international data," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 281-303.
    11. Konon, Alexander & Fritsch, Michael & Kritikos, Alexander S., 2018. "Business cycles and start-ups across industries: An empirical analysis of German regions," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 742-761.
    12. Vitek, Francis, 2006. "Measuring the Stance of Monetary Policy in a Small Open Economy: A Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Approach," MPRA Paper 802, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Herwartz, H. & Xu, F., 2010. "A functional coefficient model view of the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 37-54, February.
    14. Suzan Hol, 2006. "The influence of the business cycle on bankruptcy probability," Discussion Papers 466, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    15. Ron Diris, 2017. "Don't Hold Back? The Effect of Grade Retention on Student Achievement," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 12(3), pages 312-341, Summer.
    16. Olivier Basdevant & Nils Björksten & Özer Karagedikli, 2004. "Estimating a time varying neutral real interest rate for New Zealand," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Discussion Paper Series DP 2004/01, Reserve Bank of New Zealand.
    17. Mazumder, Sandeep, 2014. "Determinants of the sacrifice ratio: Evidence from OECD and non-OECD countries," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 117-135.
    18. Jesús Cuaresma & Ernest Gnan & Doris Ritzberger-Gruenwald, 2004. "Searching for the natural rate of interest: a euro area perspective," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 31(2), pages 185-204, June.
    19. Owolabi, Adegboyega O. & Berdiev, Aziz N. & Saunoris, James W., 2022. "Is the shadow economy procyclical or countercyclical over the business cycle? International evidence," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 257-270.
    20. Ji Liu, 2024. "Education legislations that equalize: a study of compulsory schooling law reforms in post-WWII United States," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-12, December.
    21. Prabheesh, K.P. & Anglingkusumo, Reza & Juhro, Solikin M., 2021. "The dynamics of global financial cycle and domestic economic cycles: Evidence from India and Indonesia," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 831-842.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:72:y:2011:i:6:p:1004-1015. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.