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The Economy, the Ghost in Your Gene and the Escape from Premature Mortality

Author

Listed:
  • Costa, Dora L.

    (UCLA)

  • Bygren, Lars Olov

    (Karolinska Institutet)

  • Graf, Benedikt

    (NBER)

  • Karlsson, Martin

    (University of Duisburg-Essen)

  • Price, Joseph

    (Brigham Young University)

Abstract

Explanations for the West's escape from premature mortality have focused on chronic malnutrition or income and on public health or state capacity. We argue that by ignoring the multigenerational effects of variance in ancestors' harvests, we are underestimating the contribution of modern economic growth to the escape from early death at older ages. Using a newly constructed multigenerational dataset for Sweden, we show that grandsons' longevity was strongly linked to spatial shocks in paternal grandfathers' yearly harvest variability when agricultural productivity was low and market integration was limited. We reason that an epigenetic mechanism is the most plausible explanation for our findings. We posit that the removal of trade barriers, improvements in transportation, and agricultural innovation reduced harvest variability. We contend that for older Swedish men (but not women) born 1830-1909 this reduction was as important as decreasing contemporaneous infectious disease rates and more important than eliminating exposure to poor harvests in-utero.

Suggested Citation

  • Costa, Dora L. & Bygren, Lars Olov & Graf, Benedikt & Karlsson, Martin & Price, Joseph, 2025. "The Economy, the Ghost in Your Gene and the Escape from Premature Mortality," IZA Discussion Papers 17620, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17620
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    intergenerational transmission; longevity; ecomomic growth; harvest variability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts
    • N33 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: Pre-1913

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