Childhood neighborhoods and cause-specific adult mortality in Sweden 1939-2015.

The socioeconomic health gradient has widened in recent decades. We study how childhood socioeconomic neighborhood conditions influence gender- and cause-specific adult mortality. Using uniquely detailed geocoded longitudinal microdata for a Swedish town (1939-1967), with a follow-up in national registers (1968-2015), we apply Cox proportional hazards models and estimate individual neighborhoods at the address-level. We find that childhood neighborhood social class has a lasting influence on male adult mortality (ages 40-69), even when adjusting for class position, class origin, neighborhood physical attributes and school districts. This impact was particularly pronounced for preventable causes of death, pointing to lifestyle and behavioral factors as important mechanisms.

The social context of nearest neighbors shapes educational attainment regardless of class origin.

We study the association between sociospatial neighborhood conditions throughout childhood and educational attainment in adulthood. Using unique longitudinal microdata for a medium-sized Swedish town, we geocode its population at the address level, 1939 to 1967, and link individuals to national registers, 1968 to 2015. Thus, we adopt a long-term perspective on the importance of nearby neighbors during a period when higher education expanded. Applying a method for estimating individual neighborhoods at the address level, we analyze the association between the geographically weighted social class of the nearest 6 to 100 childhood neighbors (ages 2 to 17), and the likelihood of obtaining a university degree by age 40, controlling for both family social class and school districts. We show that even when growing up in a town with relatively low economic inequality, the social class of the nearest same-age neighbors in childhood was associated with educational attainment, and that the associations were similar regardless of class origin. Growing up in low-class neighborhoods lowered educational attainment; growing up in high-class neighborhoods increased attainment. Social class and neighborhoods reinforced each other, implying that high-class children clustered with each other had much higher odds of obtaining a university degree than low-class children from low-class neighborhoods. Thus, even if all groups benefited from the great expansion of free higher education in Sweden (1960s to 1970s), the large inequalities between the classes and neighborhoods remained unchanged throughout the period. These findings show the importance of an advantageous background, both regarding the immediate family and the networks of nearby people of the same age.

Spatiotemporal historical datasets at micro-level for geocoded individuals in five Swedish parishes, 1813-1914.

This paper presents datasets that enable historical longitudinal studies of micro-level geographic factors in a rural setting. These types of datasets are new, as historical demography studies have generally failed to properly include the micro-level geographic factors. Our datasets describe the geography over five Swedish rural parishes, and by linking them to a longitudinal demographic database, we obtain a geocoded population (at the property unit level) for this area for the period 1813-1914. The population is a subset of the Scanian Economic Demographic Database (SEDD). The geographic information includes the following feature types: property units, wetlands, buildings, roads and railroads. The property units and wetlands are stored in object-lifeline time representations (information about creation, changes and ends of objects are recorded in time), whereas the other feature types are stored as snapshots in time. Thus, the datasets present one of the first opportunities to study historical spatio-temporal patterns at the micro-level.

An Old Mom Keeps You Young: Mother's Age at Last Birth and Offspring Longevity in Nineteenth-Century Utah.

This study analyzes the intergenerational effects of late childbearing on offspring's adult longevity in a population in Utah (United States) that does not display evidence of parity-specific birth control-a so-called natural fertility population. Studies have found that for women who experience late menopause and prolonged reproduction, aging is postponed and longevity is increased. This is believed to indicate female "robustness" and the impact of biological or genetic factors. If indeed there is a genetic component involved, one would expect to also find evidence for the intergenerational transmission of longevity benefits. Our study investigates the relationship between prolonged natural fertility of mothers and their offspring's survival rates in adulthood. Gompertz regression models (N = 7,716) revealed that the offspring of mothers who were naturally fertile until a relatively advanced age lived significantly longer. This observed positive effect of late reproduction was not independent of but conditional upon survival of the mother to the end of her fecundity (defined as age 50). Offspring's relative risks at death beyond age 50 were 6-12 percent lower than those of their counterparts born to mothers who had an average age at last birth. Our results, which account for various early, adult, and later-life conditions, as well as shared frailty, suggest that there is a positive relationship between mother's age at last birth and offspring longevity, and strengthen the notion that age at menopause is a good predictor of this relationship.