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Thursday 25 March 2021 11.00 - 12.15
M-5 FAM23 The Apple does not fall Far from the Tree. Health, Height and Mortality in Comparative Intergenerational Perspective
M
Network: Family and Demography Chair: Tim Riswick
Organizer: Björn Quanjer Discussant: Niels van den Berg
Jan Kok : A Genealogical Approach to Exploring Kin Correlations in Heights
Stature results from one’s inherited genes, diseases and living conditions in the first two decades of live. High correlations of height among siblings suggest relatively good conditions to reach their ‘genetic potential’. We also expect that higher SES groups will have suffered less from adverse conditions and show relative ... (Show more)
Stature results from one’s inherited genes, diseases and living conditions in the first two decades of live. High correlations of height among siblings suggest relatively good conditions to reach their ‘genetic potential’. We also expect that higher SES groups will have suffered less from adverse conditions and show relative high brother correlations. But research into socio-economic variation and long-term trends in sibling correlations is rather limited and these hypotheses have hardly been tested with historical data. In this research I link complete (descendant) genealogies of six rural families to records of conscripts (age 19) and civic guards (age 25), beginning with the general conscription of 1813. The data allow me to not only link brothers, but also fathers to sons, grandfathers to grandsons, uncles to nephews and cousins to each other. One of the questions to be explored is: is there a difference between paternal and maternal lines in the strength of kin correlations? The intergenerational comparison makes it possible to contrast the ‘genetic potential’ (height of father at 25) with sons early life conditions (reflected in height at age 19) and own adult stature (age 25). (Show less)

Matthias Rosenbaum-Feldbrügge, Björn Quanjer & Ingrid van Dijk : Parental Death and Child Well-being: Height and Mortality Effects Explored in the Netherlands 1860-1940
Earlier research in historical demography has shown that mortality and height are good indicators to capture low living standards in the nineteenth century. These indicators, however, operate very differently because mortality is measured as a binary and height as a continuous variable. Moreover, height is only available for those who ... (Show more)
Earlier research in historical demography has shown that mortality and height are good indicators to capture low living standards in the nineteenth century. These indicators, however, operate very differently because mortality is measured as a binary and height as a continuous variable. Moreover, height is only available for those who were healthy enough to survive until adolescence and adulthood. This paper will contribute to the existing literature by comparing how mortality and height reflect children’s wellbeing in response to a crisis within the family: parental death. For this purpose, we will use rich longitudinal micro-level data from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN) for the period 1860-1940. The available life course data contains height information on brothers which enables us to identify the impact of the child’s age at parental death. In addition, the gender of the deceased parent and the household’s socioeconomic background are studied as these variables are expected to alter the size of the effect. Moreover, we are also able to analyze the impact on the next generation. This research will therefore help to understand the shortcomings and benefits of using height and mortality to study the wellbeing of a historical population. (Show less)

Eric Schneider, Kris Inwood & Hamish Maxwell-Stewart : The Growth of Adolescents in the British Dominions, 1840-1920
This paper brings together many thousands of observations of stature for children aged 12 years or greater who found themselves in various jails in Australia, New Zealand and Canada 1840-1920. The early life of these adolescents was influenced by the relatively healthy environment of lower relative food price and lower ... (Show more)
This paper brings together many thousands of observations of stature for children aged 12 years or greater who found themselves in various jails in Australia, New Zealand and Canada 1840-1920. The early life of these adolescents was influenced by the relatively healthy environment of lower relative food price and lower population density than in most European societies, even if their own families tended to come from low and middle income strata in these food abundant environments.

We bring together all available records of individual adolescents in order to identify, cross-sectionally, apparent patterns of growth. We are looking particularly for evidence of the adolescent ‘growth spurt’ (timing, sources of variation, change over time) and the extent to which growth continued beyond the age of 20 years (a possible indicator of catch-up after early life stunting).

Given the potential for selection on age in historical sources of children’s growth, in a second section of the paper we examine the records of adolescents who are measured more than once, at different ages. We will analyse these longitudinal records using the SITAR growth model in order to characterize the growth pattern. SITAR predicts parameters that capture three characteristics of the growth pattern for each individual: their size, timing of the pubertal growth spurt, and speed of maturation. Thus, we can run additional regressions that analyse how individual characteristics influenced the growth pattern and how the growth pattern changed over time in these societies.

This study will yield two important sets of findings. First, because we can analyse longitudinal and cross-sectional evidence for the same populations, any differences between the longitudinal evidence and more widely available cross-sectional evidence will help us understand how to interpret cross-sectional evidence on children’s growth in other countries and periods. Second, by comparing with modern evidence, the paper will improve understanding of how the growth pattern of children changed during the long period of secular increase in these countries. (Show less)

Kristina Thompson, Maarten Lindenboom & France Portrait : The Intergenerational Transmission of Height and Health: the Case of the Netherlands, 1850-1922
Objective: There is a modest body of evidence that points to a link between increased heights, and greater reproductive success. Height, as a rough measure of health in early-life and an important component of (male) attractiveness, appears to be rewarded with a greater number of children (Stulp et al., 2012). ... (Show more)
Objective: There is a modest body of evidence that points to a link between increased heights, and greater reproductive success. Height, as a rough measure of health in early-life and an important component of (male) attractiveness, appears to be rewarded with a greater number of children (Stulp et al., 2012).
We examine height and reproductive success in the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century Netherlands. This is a particularly interesting period, because there were several trends that may have divergent impacts on this relationship. First, the demographic transition impacted the number of children Dutch couples had. After 1870, when infant mortality rates began to decline, Dutch families shrank. Still, this is a period largely prior to the widespread use of modern birth control, so fertility rates were still somewhat reflective of sexual activity.
Average Dutch stature also rose dramatically during this period, with the Dutch became the tallest people in the world by the mid-twentieth century. Further, despite the widespread evidence that taller men typically have larger families (and possibly taller sons), there is strong evidence that greater sibship size and higher birth order have a negative impact on terminal adult heights and childhood health (e.g. Oberg, 2015).
Against this backdrop, we pose the research questions: in the context of the Netherlands, to what extent does paternal height impact his reproductive success? And to what extent does this height/health effect, if any, carry across generations? We anticipate that increased height allows men to have a more socially desirable number of children (i.e., the standard deviation of number of children for tall men will be smaller than that for short men). We also anticipate that taller fathers will have taller sons. Given the tight link between height and health, we also anticipate that taller fathers will have more children who survive early-childhood.
Methods: Data come from of three databases. Our starting point is the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN), a representative (~0.5%) sample of Dutch birth certificates, years 1812-1922.
From the HSN, a representative sample of (male) military conscripts was taken, comprising the Heights and Life Courses (HLC) database, allowing us to link men with height information to fuller life course information. In this study, we exploit birth years 1850 onward, because these are linked to the population registers (which began in 1860), which contain much richer information on household composition. This gives us a sample of ~4,000 RPs with life course information.
Finally, we exploit the cross-sectional Male Kin Height (MKH) database, which includes up to three generations of military conscription data. The MKH will give us an understanding of the way in which height changed across successive generations.
To answer our first research question, we employ Cox proportional hazard models, to assess the impact of height on the number of children, holding relevant and available early-life conditions constant. To answer our second, we employ family fixed effects models, to assess the intergenerational impact of height on reproductive success and childhood survival. (Show less)

Ingrid van Dijk : Bearing the Cost. The Role of Kin in Women´s Survival over the Life Course
Do pregnancies and childbearing result in shorter lives for women? In current research into reproductive costs evolutionary theories dominate. These theories predict negative physiological effects of fertility on women’s post-reproductive survival. However, evidence for fertility-survival trade-offs in human populations is inconclusive. Some studies found the predicted negative association between the ... (Show more)
Do pregnancies and childbearing result in shorter lives for women? In current research into reproductive costs evolutionary theories dominate. These theories predict negative physiological effects of fertility on women’s post-reproductive survival. However, evidence for fertility-survival trade-offs in human populations is inconclusive. Some studies found the predicted negative association between the number of children and survival, but others a positive association, or no association at all. This paper introduces potentially beneficial effects of having children on later-life survival.
Social mechanisms may strongly affect the association between fertility and survival. Although these potentially explain why findings in this field have been inconclusive, attention for later-life survival benefits associated with reproduction is missing from the literature. Most work on human reproductive costs is done on historical databases, and here, an appreciation of social characteristics is especially essential. In the absence of modern welfare states, relatives play an important role in old-age survival as a source of informal care and resources. In historical Europe, pension savings did usually not suffice to pay for full retirement, and for care, provision of housing and resources the elderly often relied on their children and grandchildren. A larger number of children increases the chance of having living children and/or grandchildren upon reaching old age. Thus, as a consequence of support in old age, increased fertility may pay off if women survive to old age, despite – and possibly masking – negative physiological effects accumulated earlier in the life course.
Multi-generational life course data from The Netherlands and the South of Sweden for the period 1812–1968 is employed to analyze the effect of fertility on reproduction, the relation between assistance to kin help in later life, and the overall effect of fertility on survival. We include first-degree relatives (siblings, parents and children) and second-degree relatives (uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, and grandchildren). The numbers of relatives alive are likely to be subject to large change over the life course. Especially for women reaching high ages, the number of first-degree relatives may drop considerably, leaving women more vulnerable. In a second step, a distinction is made between kin nearby and kin elsewhere. The potential underestimation of reproductive costs for female survival as a consequence of beneficial effects of kin on later-life survival is reflected on. (Show less)



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