Project #3 - Intergenerational Processes and Aging in Multiple Generations

National Bureau Of Economic Research, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

OTHER PROJECT INFORMATION - Project Summary/Abstract Project #3 - Intergenerational Processes and Aging in Multiple Generations This project's main goal is to enhance a genealogical database, the Intergenerationally-Linked Aging Sample (ILAS), and use it to understand the role of non-genetic factors in the intergenerational transmission of longevity, focusing on family structure, parental socioeconomic status (SES), and environmental shocks. The ILAS data have been collected from printed family histories and genealogies and contain demographic information on 118,062 people born between 1577 and 1983. Aim 1: Enhance the ILAS by merging ecological and macroeconomic variables, including cause-specific mortality rates, annual weather variables, elevation, malaria, hookworm, crop production, and recession indicators. We will make the data publicly available and provide a visual tree of family histories. Aim 2: Investigate the intergenerational and multi-generational transmission of longevity over the past four centuries, whether (and why) intergenerational effects have changed over the centuries, the role of maternal versus paternal longevity, and how the intergenerational effect differs for men and women. Aim 3: Examine the effect on children's longevity of family structure such as children's age at parental deaths and the absence and marital status of parents in early life, and how long the familial effects can persist. Aim 4: Examine the effect of parental exposure to 1) weather shocks such as drought, flood and heat, 2) disease environments such as malaria, hookworm and epidemics, 3) economic hardships caused by historical recessions (e.g., the 1837 panic) and harvest failures on children's longevity. Aim 5: Investigate the significance of the timing and duration of the parental exposures in Aim 4 to ecological and macroeconomic conditions, how these effects persist over generations, and how these effects are associated with family structure. We also will explore the interactions between environmental and inheritable factors such as epigenetic modifications mediated by an environmental shock. Aim 6: Study how the mean and variance in life expectancy have changed over the centuries, and how these trends are related to changes in the influence of intergenerational transmission of longevity over time. Aim 7: Examine the significance of exposure to stress due to environmental shocks in determining children's longevity by comparing the children of Civil War veterans (Projects #1 and #2) and non-veterans' children (Project #3) born in similar years.