1,721,031 research outputs found
Covid-19 Aftermath and Population Science’s Research Agenda
Full text linkThis essay examines the potential impact of Covid-19 on maternal and child health, the elderly, and the “sandwich generation” of young adults
Early conditions, heredity (epigenetics), and the life course: explaining the obesity epidemic
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Distinguishing between interaction and dispersion effects in GxE analysis
No full textThe study of GxE is messy. Multiple and challenging obstacles need to be overcome to reach a
clean estimation, including confounding, selection, insufficient statistical power, model misspecification,
measurement error, and difficulties discriminating between quantitative and qualitative
changes when using polygenic scores. In this paper, we focus on one specific challenge: the
importance of distinguishing between interaction and dispersion effects in any analysis of geneenvironment
interactions. We first argue that a critical decision that researchers must make is
choosing between indicators of genetic penetrance, slopes of G, or variance decomposition, h2
or correlation. Second, we use simulation to assess alternative methods to identify discrepancies
between slopes and dispersion effects when studying GxE. Based on our results, we suggest using
simple visualizations and Bayesian distributional models to evaluate patterns of variation in
slopes and phenotypical variance, and justify the estimate and model to retrieve GxE interactions
on theoretical grounds and the precise definition of the research question.Peer reviewe
Subjective survival expectations and observed survival: How consistent are they?
No full textIn this paper, we use new models to convert subjective expectations elicited from individual responses into conditional survival functions. We also estimate the effects of individual characteristics and assess the impact of health shocks on individual updates of subjective expectations. We use Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data from 1992 to 2006. By and large, our results confirm past empirical findings, but also identify patterns not documented in previous research. We show that the subjective probabilities are remarkably close to the results of actual life tables constructed from observed data, that whites underestimate their survival chances more than blacks, that women underestimate their survival chances more than men, and that the subjective underestimation of conditional survival increases with age in all population subgroups. We find significant differences in the survival outlooks of the original HRS cohort and a more recent HRS cohort (1992 versus 2004). These differences persist after introducing suitable controls. The observed mortality differentials between smokers and non-smokers, obese and non-obese individuals, and high-education and low-education groups are quite close to those of these subgroups’ subjective survival expectations. Finally, we find large updating effects that result from recent health shocks on subjective expectations.Peer reviewe
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Impacts of the 1918 flu on survivors’ nutritional status: A double quasi-natural experiment
Full text linkThree files needed to reproduce our work (data, code, results) are in
https://gitlab.com/csic-echo/1918-flu-puerto-rico. Este artículo está sujeto a una licencia CC BY 4.0Robust empirical evidence supports the idea that embryonic and, more generally, intrauterine disruptions induced by the 1918-flu pandemic had long-term consequences on adult health status and other conditions. In this paper we assess the 1918-flu long-term effects not just of in utero exposure but also during infancy and early childhood. A unique set of events that took place in Puerto Rico during 1918–1919 generated conditions of a “double quasi-natural experiment”. We exploit these conditions to empirically identify effects of exposure to the 1918 flu pandemic and those of the devastation left by an earthquake-tsunami that struck the island in 1918. Because the earthquake-tsunami affected mostly the Western coast of the island whereas early (in utero and postnatal) exposure to the flu was restricted to those born in the interval 1917–1920, we use geographic variation to identify the effects of the quake and timing of birth variation to identify those of the flu. We benefit from availability of information on markers of nutritional status in a nationally representative sample of individuals aged 75 and older in 2002. We make two contributions. First, unlike most fetal origins research that singles out early nutritional status as a determinant of adult health, we hypothesize that the 1918 flu damaged the nutritional status of adult survivors who, at the time of the flu, were in utero or infants. Second, we target markers of nutritional status largely set when the adult survivors were infants and young children. Estimates of effects of the pandemic are quite large mostly among females and those who were exposed to the earthquake-tsunami. Impacts of the flu in areas less affected by the earthquake are smaller but do vary by area flu severity. These findings constitute empirical evidence supporting the conjecture that effects of the 1918 flu and/or the earthquake are associated not just with disruption experienced during the fetal period but also postnatally.This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging (https://www.nia.nih.gov/), National Institute of Child Health and Development (https://www.nichd.nih.gov), Fogarty International Center Global Research Training in Population and Health (https://www.fic.nih.gov) and European Research Council (https://erc.europa.eu/) via the following project grants R01-AG016209 (AP), R03-AG015673(AP), R01-AG018016(AP), R37-AG025216 (AP), RO1-AG056608 (AP;HBS), RO1-AG052030(AP;HBS); D43-TW001586(AP), R24-HD047873(AP), P30-AG-017266(AP), R24 HD041022(UCLA:HBS); European Union Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, Project No 788582(AP).Peer reviewe
Latin American Mortality Database LAMBdA Advantages and Disadvantages for Creating a Subnational LAMBdA Life Tables
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You Are What Your Parents Ate: A Study on the Intergenerational Effects of Famine Exposure on Cardiometabolic Health in Later Life
No full textUsing a unique dataset that combines large nationally representative
health surveys with population registries from the Netherlands, this study
examines the Dutch Hunger Winter case study to investigate the effects
of in utero exposure to famine on cardiometabolic conditions,
socioecomic status, and behavioral risks for the offspring of the exposedThe results of the study show individuals with parents exposed to famine
during gestation are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, are
more likely to be classified in the obese BMI category, as well as ever
being diagnosed with any cardiometabolic conditionThis study is one of the first to provide evidence for how in womb
exposure to insults can lead to increased cardiometabolic risks and lower
socioeconomic attainment for the offspring of the exposedN
The effect of assortative mating, differential fertility, and genetic and cultural heritability on obesity trends: results from a stable-population mode
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Ready–Willing–Able: Early childhood mortality decline in Turkey
No full textWe test a conjecture to explain Turkey’s decades-long ‘underachievement’ in early child mortality improvements. We argue that it is largely a consequence of cultural barriers to embracing available modern medical technology and healthcare practices. The empirical test rests on a reformulation of Coale’s Ready–Willing–Able (RWA) framework for explaining fertility changes, which makes it suitable to understand mortality changes. We use structural equation modelling and Demographic and Health Surveys spanning 1993–2013 to estimate basic parameters of the reformulated framework. These parameters are then used to classify mothers into four groups with different configurations of RWA dimensions and different probabilities of adopting modern medical practices. We find that observed behaviours in these groups were consistent with RWA expectations. In addition, we find that an important contributor to Turkey’s lagging mortality decline was a population distribution biased towards groups more reticent to adopting modern healthcare.Palloni’s research was supported by the National Institute on Aging via research project grants R01-AG016209, R03-AG015673, R01-AG018016, R37-AG025216, R01AG056608, and R01AG52030; by a Fogarty International Center award for Global Research Training in Population Health, D43-TW001586; by core grants to the Center for Demography and Ecology, R24-HD047873 and to the Center for Demography of Health and Aging, P30-AG017266, both at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; and by a European Research Council (ERC) grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 788582)N
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