Inheritance, Environment, and Mortality in Older Ages, Southern Sweden, 1813–1894

Abstract

This essay explores the role played by inheritance on human longevity. We estimate a model of overall mortality among married persons aged 50 years and above taking genetic as well as socioeconomic and environmental factors into account. We consider whether these factors have temporary or long-lasting effects on health. The demographic and economic individual level data come from the Scanian Demographic Database. These data cover five rural parishes in the southernmost part of Sweden for the period 1813–1894. To these, local grain prices, as an indicator of food costs, and the local infant mortality rate, as an indicator of the disease load, have been added. We find that age of death of the mother and the father have persistent impacts on their adult children’s overall mortality regardless of sex, even after controlling for socioeconomic and environmental factors throughout the life course. In addition, we find strong birth cohort effects and effects of the disease load in the first year of life on male offspring. We are, however, unable to find any effects of socioeconomic status, neither at the time of birth or achieved later in life, a result consistent with earlier findings.