TY - JOUR
T1 - Early life environment and adult height
T2 - The case of Chile
AU - Borrescio-Higa, Florencia
AU - Bozzoli, Carlos Guillermo
AU - Droller, Federico
N1 - Funding Information:
FBH is supported by grant 11160513 of Proyecto FONDECYT Iniciacion from CONICYT in Chile. FD is supported by grant 11170498 of Proyecto FONDECYT Iniciacion from CONICYT in Chile. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views or policies of CONICYT. The funders did not play a role in the design and conduct of the study, in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data, and in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript.
Funding Information:
FBH is supported by grant 11160513 of Proyecto FONDECYT Iniciacion from CONICYT in Chile. FD is supported by grant 11170498 of Proyecto FONDECYT Iniciacion from CONICYT in Chile. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views or policies of CONICYT. The funders did not play a role in the design and conduct of the study, in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data, and in the preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript. We thank the editor, Joerg Baten, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on previous versions of this article.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2019/5
Y1 - 2019/5
N2 - In this paper, we analyze the relationship between adult height and early-life disease environment, proxied by the infant mortality rate (IMR) in the first year of life, using cohort-region level data for Chile for 1960–1989. IMRs show a remarkable reduction of 100 points per thousand over this thirty-year period, declining from 119.4 to 21.0 per thousand. We also document a 0.96 cm increase in height per decade.We find that the drop in IMRs observed among our cohorts explains almost all of the long-term trend in rising adult heights, and that per capita GDP does not appear to have any predictive power in this context. Results are robust in a variety of specifications, which include area and cohort dummies, an adjustment for internal migration, and urbanization rates. Our results point to the long-term effect of a public health policy.
AB - In this paper, we analyze the relationship between adult height and early-life disease environment, proxied by the infant mortality rate (IMR) in the first year of life, using cohort-region level data for Chile for 1960–1989. IMRs show a remarkable reduction of 100 points per thousand over this thirty-year period, declining from 119.4 to 21.0 per thousand. We also document a 0.96 cm increase in height per decade.We find that the drop in IMRs observed among our cohorts explains almost all of the long-term trend in rising adult heights, and that per capita GDP does not appear to have any predictive power in this context. Results are robust in a variety of specifications, which include area and cohort dummies, an adjustment for internal migration, and urbanization rates. Our results point to the long-term effect of a public health policy.
KW - Adult height
KW - Developing country
KW - Income
KW - Infant mortality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85063066377&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.ehb.2018.11.003
DO - 10.1016/j.ehb.2018.11.003
M3 - Article
C2 - 30901619
AN - SCOPUS:85063066377
SN - 1570-677X
VL - 33
SP - 134
EP - 143
JO - Economics and Human Biology
JF - Economics and Human Biology
ER -