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

Author

Listed:
  • Dora Costa
  • Lars Olov Bygren
  • Benedikt Graf
  • Martin Karlsson
  • Joseph Price

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

  • Dora Costa & Lars Olov Bygren & Benedikt Graf & Martin Karlsson & Joseph Price, 2025. "The Economy, the Ghost in Your Gene, and the Escape from Premature Mortality," NBER Working Papers 33343, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33343
    Note: AG CH DAE DEV
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    More about this item

    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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