Early-Life Conditions and Adult Mortality Decline in the Netherlands, 1850-1999

Jona Schellekens, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Frans W. A. van Poppel, Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)

How important are improvements in early-life conditions in adult mortality decline? This paper provides an estimate of the contribution of early-life conditions to mortality decline above age thirty in the Netherlands between the onset of decline in the 1870s until the end of the twentieth century. Whereas in the nineteenth century period-specific influences were more powerful than cohort-specific ones, in the twentieth century cohort-specific influences were more powerful. Increased height explains most, if not all, of the twentieth-century decline. Early childhood mortality decline, on the other hand, did not contribute to adult mortality decline.