Life-course influences on health and mortality

Severity of use tobacco consumption is more in India compared to other countries. The major form of tobacco consumption in India is smokeless tobacco. With the changes in the dynamics of societies, the prevalence of tobacco has increased its wings towards between women and young children have increased. In this context, this study based the correlates between who start early and late use of tobacco in India. The findings reveal that, the people living in rural areas are higher using the tobacco (smoking & smokeless form) as compared to urban areas in India for both ages at initiation. The education is the important factor to remove the higher use of tobacco as we know those students who have the secondary and above are less started in the both ages (early and late) at initiation of tobacco. Men are using tobacco higher for females in both early and late age at initiation of tobacco in the country. The risk of tobacco use is highest between those who start early and continue its use for a long time till the end of life. Age and region are two factors which significantly positively associated in both ages (early and late) at initiation of tobacco consumption.

Studies suggest that in the short-term health improves during economic recessions, but whether these effects are offset by long-run negative health effects has not been established. We examine whether economic recessions and booms during early- and later-adulthood (ages 16-49) have negative long-lasting effects on health at ages 50-74. We link data on macroeconomic fluctuations for 11 countries to survey data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We estimate country-fixed effect models for several measures of physical functioning (incl. grip strength) using exogenous information about the state of the business cycle at specific age-intervals as main covariates. Results show that each additional recession experienced at any age-interval between 16 and 49 years is associated with worse health outcomes at later life. At the same time booms experienced at ages 16-49 can reduce the risk of some disability outcomes later in life. This pattern not only holds for levels of disability but also for changes of functional status at ages 50-74. Our findings suggest that long-run negative effects of less favourable economic conditions outweigh potential positive short-term effects of economic declines. They also raise important questions on the mechanisms linking macroeconomic shocks to health in the long-run.

In the last years discrimination has been noted within the context of health care, showing that immigrants are discriminated against when it comes to receiving medical treatment and access to health care services (e.g. Casagrande et. al., 2007). However, so far most studies have been carried out in the United States (e.g. La Veist et. al., 2000). Thus, this studies focuses on perceived race discrimination in health care in Germany, since the migrant minority is growing due to the demographic transition. For this study a survey on patient satisfaction was conducted within three randomly chosen international Christian communities. In this way perceived discrimination to due religion can be excluded. Furthermore no migrants with a Turkish background were taken into account, since numerous studies have shown that they are discriminated again. Therefore this study focuses on other migrant communities than Turkish ones. The questions covered topics on trust towards the physician, satisfaction with the physician and the hospital, perceived health status, health behavior and discrimation- observed one as well as perceived one. The results have shown that indeed migrants feel discriminated against, are less satisfied and observe discrimination more than natives.

The World Health Organisation in 2003 recommended the practice of exclusive breastfeeding to mothers globally because of the numerous health benefits associated with the practice. As such, the Ghana Health Service also adopted the policy for implementation. Most Ghanaian babies are therefore breastfed exclusively. Introducing babies to other food substances after six months of exclusive breastfeeding can be very challenging. This paper reports on a study that explored the experiences of mothers in the Cape Coast Metropolis in Ghana and some of the challenges they faced. The paper draws on a purely qualitative study underpinned by a phenomenological framework. Data is derived from the narratives of twenty-five mothers who had successfully completed six months of exclusive breastfeeding and some of the challenges they experienced as they tried to introduce their babies to complementary food. The study discovered that the babies seem not ready for the complementary food, they cried continuously yet refused food whenever given, and some lost weight during the transition and others preferred only watery food. Advice from experienced mothers and health workers is recommended for mothers in this transitional stage of their infants’ life for their babies to adapt smoothly to the complementary food.

The adverse health impact of solid fuel use such as firewood, coal and biomass is well established. Evidence from developing countries suggest that women disproportionately bear the health costs of using such fuel. Even though women stand to benefit immensely from a switch to cleaner fuel, few studies have examined women's role in enabling that change. Using individual level data on asset ownership in Karnataka households, we examine the link between women's asset ownership and the propensity of a household to use solid fuel. Along with improvements in child health outcomes and education, female ownership of assets has been shown to have a bearing on the intra-household status of women. We find that women's ownership of assets have a statistically significant, negative impact on the propensity of the household to use solid fuel.

This study investigates how the psychological health of British men and women living alone in mid-life is related to partnership history and parenthood status. Although living alone in mid-life is known to be associated with poor health, and despite the substantial rise in living alone in mid-life over time, little attention has been paid to the relationship between living alone and health in mid-life. Previous research has mainly focussed on health outcomes by marital status and partnership history, but has failed to take into account that those who are either single or living without a partner could be living in very different living arrangements. This study stresses that partnership and parenthood trajectories into living alone in mid-life are diverse and that these life course trajectories are in turn related to health. It uses data from Understanding Society to examine how psychological health in mid-life of those living alone in the United Kingdom is related to several partnership characteristics and the presence of non-residential children. Preliminary findings show that several aspects of partnership history matter for psychological health in mid-life and that the relation between parenthood status and psychological health is gender-specific.

Norwegian mortality levels have been declining during the last decades. Simultaneously the proportion of the population receiving disability pension has been increasing substantially, especially among the women. Several previous studies have demonstrated a higher mortality of disability pensioners relative to the rest of the population. We investigate how the mortality level of people on - and not on - disability pension changes over time by applying population registry data for cohort analysis. We observe mortality over the period 1971-2010. Preliminary results show that relative mortality levels of female disability pensioners have declined substantially over the last decades.

A substantial body of literature has focused on early familial life as a source of longevity differential in very old age. The channels through which early life environment is hypothesized to influence mortality in later life are diverse and could be direct or indirect. In this paper we discuss early-life factors which could affect an individual’s chance to reach the advanced ages, with a particular focus on siblings of centenarians. Using an event-history database that links age at death of individuals to their childhood characteristics gathered from the 1901 and 1911 Canadian census records and to their adult characteristics, we address two questions: Are early-life conditions associated with longevity among the oldest old; and Do adult SES and mariage mediate the effect of early-life environment on later life survival? Non-parametric analysis are performed to estimate the effect of each early-life and adult variables using the Kaplan-Meier estimator as well as gender-specific proportional hazard models with a Gompertz specification of the risk of mortality. The results of this study will shed light on the extent to which the effect of early life conditions on mortality later in life is mediated by the attained socioeconomic position in adulthood or marital status.

Spouses of centenarians have a survival advantage compared to their birth cohort. However, less is understood about the pathways by which spousal similarity in exceptional survival exactly operates. This study investigates whether positive homogamy and/or shared environment are related to the resemblance among spouses and how it can explain why spouses of centenarians are more likely to achieve a very long life span. Our sample consists of 850 validated French-Canadian centenarians who died between 1985-2005, and their spouses. Using early-life family variables gathered from the 1901 and 1911 censuses and measuring the social level of the family, we investigate through homogamy models and logit models if there is a tendency to partner with individuals of the same social origin. Consideration will mainly be given to the Assortative Mating hypothesis, which argues that spousal concordance in health and longevity is largely a result of a selective process through which individuals choose partners based on a similar social origin and shared childhood characteristics, and to the Shared Resources Hypothesis. Results could shed light on the extent to which spousal concordance in longevity is channelled through social origin in early life and could put forward the impact of lifecourse events in achieving old-age mortality.

It is well known that risk of death during the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic was unexpectedly high for those aged 20-40. Analyses of death records show that the greatest number of deaths occurred at the age of 28. It is possible that those people who were born in the period surrounding the 1890 Russian Influenza pandemic were at greatest risk of mortality during the 1918 pandemic, 28 years later. Further, the potential effects of socioeconomic inequality on risk of mortality during the 1918 pandemic has not yet been examined. This paper addresses these two questions using data from Registered Death Records that link individuals who died in Ontario during the pandemic to their birth records. Exact date of birth is used as a proxy for exposure to the 1890 influenza, allowing us to assess the risk of death in 1918 based on prenatal and early life exposure to the 1890 flu. We also link individuals to their entries in the Canadian Census of 1901 and 1911, which provides information on individual socioeconomic conditions over time. We use recently digitized records to investigate the effect of biological insults as well as social structure on mortality during a severe influenza pandemic.