Lasting effects of the Spanish flu on income and health in later life. The case of Southern Sweden.

This paper examines the effects of exposure to the Spanish flu during infancy and in-utero, identified as critical periods in the physiological development of the individual, on socio-economic position and health in later life. The data used is from the Scanian Economic-Demographic Database, which includes individual level longitudinal data, both demographic and economic, for five rural parishes in southern Sweden, from the nineteenth century until today. In this paper we focus on the birth cohorts born between 1912 and 1925. We have previously shown that those born immediately before the Spanish flu and exposed in the first year of life are less able to reach higher socio-economic positions than cohort born before or afterwards (Bengtsson and Helgertz 2012). In this paper we expand this analysis by following these cohorts until later in life to examine lasting health impacts of the Spanish flu. Doing so we take both direct and indirect effects—via income and socio-economic position—into account by making use of a structural equation modeling approach. The overall finding is that exposure to the Spanish flu in first year of life affects both economic outcomes and health in older ages, and that health is affected directly, not via income and socio-economic position.