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  5. Don't Stress: Early Life Conditions, Hypertension, and Selection into Associated Risk Factors
 
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Don't Stress: Early Life Conditions, Hypertension, and Selection into Associated Risk Factors

Author(s)
McGovern, Mark  
Uri
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3884
Date Issued
2012-10
Date Available
2012-11-02T17:17:24Z
Abstract
Early life conditions have been linked to various domains of later life health, including cardiovascular outcomes. Using life history data from 13 European countries, I find that childhood socioeconomic status and measures of childhood health are related to hypertension, although there is cross country heterogeneity in these effects. I account for potential omitted variable bias by using aggregate measures of public health at birth, which are plausibly exogenous to the individual. I find that infant mortality at birth is positively related to hypertension, even allowing for cohort effects, and controlling for GDP at birth. Results imply that improvements in early life conditions in Europe led to an
overall reduction in the hypertension rate of between 3 and 6 percentage points, for the cohort born 1931-1935, relative to the cohort born 1956-1960. An alternative strand of literature in epidemiology links contemporaneous factors, such as work place environment, to heart disease. However, theories of life cycle decision making suggest that individuals may be selected into these adverse environments and behaviours on the basis of their initial conditions. I demonstrate a strong association between
early environment and these risk factors. Results imply that these should therefore be viewed as outcomes which lie on the causal pathway between initial conditions and later outcomes, in which case ignoring this selection will misattribute at least part of the effects of early life environment to current circumstance. This has important policy implications for targeting hypertension as it indicates that emphasis should also be placed on combatting disadvantage across the life course, rather
than just factors which only manifest themselves in adulthood.
Sponsorship
Not applicable
Type of Material
Working Paper
Publisher
University College Dublin. School of Economics
Series
UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series
WP12/27
Subjects

Hypertension

Early life conditions...

Work stress

Infant mortality

Health behaviour

Subject – LCSH
Health status indicators
Hypertension
Job stress
Infants--Mortality
Health behavior
Web versions
http://www.ucd.ie/t4cms/WP12_27.pdf
Language
English
Status of Item
Not peer reviewed
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ie/
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WP12_27.pdf

Size

540.13 KB

Format

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Checksum (MD5)

3dd230065280782c06d3b5e2a8f0f9fa

Owning collection
Economics Working Papers & Policy Papers

Item descriptive metadata is released under a CC-0 (public domain) license: https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/.
All other content is subject to copyright.

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