Health Shocks of the Father and Longevity of the Children's Children / Dora Costa.

By:

Costa, Dora

Contributor(s):

National Bureau of Economic Research

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w29553.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2021.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: Whether and how a paternal health shock cascades across multiple generations to affect descendant health is understudied even though a link between ancestral living conditions and descendant health may constitute an important source of differences in the stock of health capital across families and thus across ethnic, racial and social groups. I study how a paternal health shock affects grandchildren's longevity in a unique setting where the ancestral stressor is the grandfather's ex-POW status in the US Civil War (1861-5) and the children are born after the war. Ancestral stress is associated with longevity after age 45 of male-line grandsons but not of granddaughters or female-line grandchildren. I rule out transmission through socioeconomic channels and direct cultural transmission from grandfather to grandson. An epigenetic explanation is consistent with observed male-line transmission at epigenetically sensitive ancestral ages and mediation by own late gestational conditions. Consistent with epigenetic reprogramming depending on the in-utero environment, the association between the veteran's ex-POW status and that of his male-line descendants declines across generations.

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December 2021.

Whether and how a paternal health shock cascades across multiple generations to affect descendant health is understudied even though a link between ancestral living conditions and descendant health may constitute an important source of differences in the stock of health capital across families and thus across ethnic, racial and social groups. I study how a paternal health shock affects grandchildren's longevity in a unique setting where the ancestral stressor is the grandfather's ex-POW status in the US Civil War (1861-5) and the children are born after the war. Ancestral stress is associated with longevity after age 45 of male-line grandsons but not of granddaughters or female-line grandchildren. I rule out transmission through socioeconomic channels and direct cultural transmission from grandfather to grandson. An epigenetic explanation is consistent with observed male-line transmission at epigenetically sensitive ancestral ages and mediation by own late gestational conditions. Consistent with epigenetic reprogramming depending on the in-utero environment, the association between the veteran's ex-POW status and that of his male-line descendants declines across generations.