Introduction
Early-life effects on socio-economic performance and mortality in later life: A full life-course approach using contemporary and historical sources

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Background

The significance of conditions in early childhood for health in later life has been long known. Barker (1994: 155) cites Mary McCraicen, secretary of the ladies committee of the Belfast Poorhouse, who in the 1830s wrote about the importance of proper nourishment and treatment during infancy for future life. Hellstenius (1871), in an analysis of the relationship between harvests during the foetal stage and health of recruits to the Swedish army, cites a former secretary of the state, Hans Järta,

Age, cohort and period factors

Demographers often wish to distinguish between period and cohort factors in addition to age. Early-life factors that have long lasting effects on health are called cohort factors while factors affecting all (or almost all) age groups at the same time are called period factors. The issue at hand is their relative importance. Finch and Crimmins (2004) examined age-specific mortality rates for various countries and argued that cohort factors were important for the great mortality decline. A

Explanatory factors, pathways and mechanisms

Contemporary studies can include social and economic information such as parental socio-economic status at birth, and own socio-economic status at certain ages in adulthood, education, and income. Environmental factors, such as prevalence of infectious diseases or Gross Domestic Product per capita, are sometimes also used. Genetically informed measures, such as longevity of parents or grandparents have, however, only rarely been included (see Bengtsson & Mineau, 2008).

Models often try to

The Mölle meeting and organisation of the special issue

To explore this topic we organized an international meeting in June 2006 in Mölle, Sweden. The meeting, jointly organized by the Research Group in Economic Demography at Lund University (now the Centre for Economic Demography) and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Populations Committee on Historical Demography, brought together a multi-disciplinary group of investigators with interests in historical demography and epidemiology. For this Special Issue we have chosen eleven

Conclusions

The papers in this Special Issue illustrate the contribution of both prospective studies and retrospective studies to the growing body of work on the health effects of early-life conditions. Contemporary prospective studies are valuable because they include a large amount of detailed, individual-level information that is necessary to study causal pathways for well-defined cohorts, an advantage that will only increase as subjects approach their later years. These studies may allow more direct

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