How Conditions in Early Life Affect Mortality by Age and Gender: Southern Sweden, 1830-1968

Luciana Quaranta, Lund University

By using individual level data from Southern Sweden for 1830-1968, this work analyses the effects of early life conditions on mortality. Early life conditions are measured using local infant mortality rates, adult crude death rates and prices as indicators, in order to value the impact of the disease environment during infancy and the health of the mother and the level of nutrition during the foetal stage. Some of the initial findings reveal that the disease load in the first year of life has an influence both on childhood and adult mortality. A passage from a dominance of a selection to a scarring effect across the life course due to conditions in early life was observed, as well as differences by gender and by birth cohort on the magnitude of these effects, results that will be further explored in this study and which are new to the literature.