0000000000289100
AUTHOR
Maarten Lindeboom
Babies of the War: Effect of War Exposure Early in Life on Mortality Throughout Life
There is increasing evidence that circumstances very early in our lives, and particularly during pregnancy, can affect our health for the remainder of life. Studies that have looked at this relationship have often used extreme situations, such as famines that occurred during wartime. Here we investigate whether less extreme situations during World War II also affected later-life mortality for cohorts born in Belgium, France, The Netherlands, and Norway. We argue that these occupied countries experienced a considerable deterioration in daily life situations and show that this resulted in strongly increased mortality rates and lower probabilities of survival until age 55 among civilian popula…
Why People Born During World War II are Healthier
War leads civilians to suffer. This can take extreme forms, such as during periods of intense violence or famines. But also outside of such episodes, civilians’ lives during wars can be harsh, as they suffer from poorer nutritional situations, stress, recessions, and sub optimally functioning health care systems. The more extreme types of suffering are proven to lead to a worse health among those prenatally exposed to them. But long-run effects of prenatal exposure to the latter circumstances have thus far largely been unexplored, even though in many wars more pregnant women are exposed to these “everyday” circumstances than to the extreme circumstances. We study the general, population-wid…
Ramadan exposure and birth outcomes: a population-based study from the Netherlands.
AbstractBackground:Ramadan, the Islamic month of daytime fasting, is observed by many pregnant Muslims. Although pregnant women are exempt, many prefer to fast. Previous research has shown long-term adverse effects on various health outcomes among the offspring, but evidence on effects on perinatal outcomes is mixed. This study investigates effects of Ramadan during pregnancy among Muslims in the Netherlands.Methods:Data from the Perinatal Registry of the Netherlands (Perined) on all births between 2000 and 2010 to mothers recorded as Mediterranean (i.e. of Turkish/Moroccan descent, a proxy for Muslim) (n = 139,322) or as ethnically Dutch (n = 1,481,435) were used. Ramadan exposure was defi…
Early life conditions and later life inequality in health
Abstract Prenatal exposure to adverse conditions is known to affect health throughout the life span. It has also been shown that health is unevenly distributed at advanced ages. This chapter investigates whether health inequalities at old age may be partially caused by prenatal circumstances. We use a sample of people aged 71–91 from eight European countries and assess how shocks in GDP that occurred while the respondents were still in utero affect four important dimensions of later-life health: cognition, depression, functional limitations, and grip strength. We find that early-life macro-economic circumstances do not affect health at advanced ages, nor do they affect inequalities in healt…