IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v75y2012i8p1497-1504.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Early life socioeconomic conditions in rural areas and old-age mortality in twentieth-century Quebec

Author

Listed:
  • Gagnon, Alain
  • Bohnert, Nora

Abstract

This study examines the effects of early life socioeconomic and residential conditions on adult mortality. The family and residential details of children living in rural areas of Quebec, Canada, in 1901 were linked to their subsequent ages at death using a database compiling information from the 1901 Canadian Census and Quebec vital statistics registers. Survival analysis results suggest that males raised on a farm and in a household owned by their father had lower mortality after the age of fifty than other males from rural areas. Chances for survival at older ages were not equal, however, among males whose father was a farmer. Most notably, males raised on a larger farmstead, an indicator of a higher socioeconomic status, experienced lower risk of mortality than those raised by farmers owning fewer acres. Results were widely different for females, who did not gain an advantage from being raised on a farm, wealthy or not, regardless of homeownership, but instead from having a literate father. Accounting for selection bias and shared frailty among brothers served to enhance the significance and effect size of acreage wealth and of other early life factors in the prediction of male adult mortality risk. This study provides evidence that early life effects on later life health and mortality could often be underestimated, due to a failure to account for selection and unobserved heterogeneity.

Suggested Citation

  • Gagnon, Alain & Bohnert, Nora, 2012. "Early life socioeconomic conditions in rural areas and old-age mortality in twentieth-century Quebec," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(8), pages 1497-1504.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:75:y:2012:i:8:p:1497-1504
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.06.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953612004856
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.06.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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. Gerard van den Berg & Gabriele Doblhammer-Reiter & Kaare Christensen, 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, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(2), pages 507-530, May.
    2. Frederick J. Boehmke & Daniel S. Morey & Megan Shannon, 2006. "Selection Bias and Continuous‐Time Duration Models: Consequences and a Proposed Solution," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(1), pages 192-207, January.
    3. Notkola, V. & Punsar, S. & Karvonen, M. J. & Haapakoski, J., 1985. "Socio-economic conditions in childhood and mortality and morbidity caused by coronary heart disease in adulthood in rural Finland," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 21(5), pages 517-523, January.
    4. Preston, Samuel H. & Hill, Mark E. & Drevenstedt, Greg L., 1998. "Childhood conditions that predict survival to advanced ages among African-Americans," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 47(9), pages 1231-1246, November.
    5. Smith, Ken R. & Mineau, Geraldine P. & Garibotti, Gilda & Kerber, Richard, 2009. "Effects of childhood and middle-adulthood family conditions on later-life mortality: Evidence from the Utah Population Database, 1850-2002," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(9), pages 1649-1658, May.
    6. Mark Hayward & Bridget Gorman, 2004. "The long arm of childhood: The influence of early-life social conditions on men’s mortality," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 41(1), pages 87-107, February.
    7. Heckman, James, 2013. "Sample selection bias as a specification error," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 31(3), pages 129-137.
    8. Jenifer Hamil-Luker & Angela O’rand, 2007. "Gender differences in the link between childhood socioeconomic conditions and heart attack risk in adulthood," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 44(1), pages 137-158, February.
    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. Helgertz, Jonas & Persson, Mats R., 2014. "Early life conditions and long-term sickness absence during adulthood – A longitudinal study of 9000 siblings in Sweden," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 224-231.
    2. Cristina Giudici & Silvia Polettini & Alessandra Rose & Nicolas Brouard, 2019. "Which Aspects of Elderly Living Conditions are Important to Predict Mortality? The Complex Role of Family Ties at Home and in Institutions," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 142(3), pages 1255-1283, April.

    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. Zachary Zimmer & Heidi Hanson & Ken Smith, 2016. "Childhood socioeconomic status, adult socioeconomic status, and old-age health trajectories," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 34(10), pages 285-320.
    2. Shen, Ke & Zeng, Yi, 2014. "Direct and indirect effects of childhood conditions on survival and health among male and female elderly in China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 207-214.
    3. Mikko Myrskylä & Andrew Fenelon, 2012. "Maternal Age and Offspring Adult Health: Evidence From the Health and Retirement Study," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 49(4), pages 1231-1257, November.
    4. Smith, Ken R. & Hanson, Heidi A. & Norton, Maria C. & Hollingshaus, Michael S. & Mineau, Geraldine P., 2014. "Survival of offspring who experience early parental death: Early life conditions and later-life mortality," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 180-190.
    5. Khlat, Myriam & Jusot, Florence & Ville, Isabelle, 2009. "Social origins, early hardship and obesity: A strong association in women, but not in men?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(9), pages 1692-1699, May.
    6. Kieron Barclay & Martin Kolk, 2015. "Birth Order and Mortality: A Population-Based Cohort Study," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(2), pages 613-639, April.
    7. Kieron J. Barclay & Martin Kolk, 2018. "Birth Intervals and Health in Adulthood: A Comparison of Siblings Using Swedish Register Data," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(3), pages 929-955, June.
    8. 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.
    9. Haas, Steven, 2008. "Trajectories of functional health: The 'long arm' of childhood health and socioeconomic factors," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(4), pages 849-861, February.
    10. Heidi Hanson & Ken Smith & Zachary Zimmer, 2015. "Reproductive History and Later-Life Comorbidity Trajectories: A Medicare-Linked Cohort Study From the Utah Population Database," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 52(6), pages 2021-2049, December.
    11. 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.
    12. Ryan Masters & Robert Hummer & Daniel Powers & Audrey Beck & Shih-Fan Lin & Brian Finch, 2014. "Long-Term Trends in Adult Mortality for U.S. Blacks and Whites: An Examination of Period- and Cohort-Based Changes," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 51(6), pages 2047-2073, December.
    13. Gary Yeung & Gerard Berg & Maarten Lindeboom & France Portrait, 2014. "The impact of early-life economic conditionson cause-specific mortality during adulthood," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(3), pages 895-919, July.
    14. Myrskylä, Mikko & Elo, Irma T. & Kohler, Iliana V. & Martikainen, Pekka, 2014. "The association between advanced maternal and paternal ages and increased adult mortality is explained by early parental loss," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 215-223.
    15. Janssen, Fanny & Kunst, Anton E. & Mackenbach, Johan P., 2006. "Association between gross domestic product throughout the life course and old-age mortality across birth cohorts: Parallel analyses of seven European countries, 1950-1999," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 239-254, July.
    16. James Smith, 2009. "Reconstructing childhood health histories," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 46(2), pages 387-403, May.
    17. Lazuka, Volha, 2017. "The lasting health and income effects of public health formation in Sweden," Lund Papers in Economic History 153, Lund University, Department of Economic History.
    18. Das, Aniruddha, 2022. "Childhood police encounters, social isolation and epigenetic age acceleration among older U.S. adults," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 301(C).
    19. James Smith, 2009. "Reconstructing childhood health histories," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), pages 387-403.
    20. Kane, Jennifer B. & Harris, Kathleen Mullan & Siega-Riz, Anna Maria, 2018. "Intergenerational pathways linking maternal early life adversity to offspring birthweight," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 89-96.

    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:75:y:2012:i:8:p:1497-1504. 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.