Instrumental Variable Estimation of the Causal Effect of Hunger Early in Life on Health Later in Life
47 Pages Posted: 9 Mar 2012
There are 2 versions of this paper
Instrumental Variable Estimation of the Causal Effect of Hunger Early in Life on Health Later in Life
Date Written: 2012
Abstract
Numerous studies have evaluated the effect of nutrition early in life on health much later in life by comparing individuals born during a famine to others. Nutritional intake is typically unobserved and endogenous, whereas famines arguably provide exogenous variation in the provision of nutrition. However, living through a famine early in life does not necessarily imply a lack of nutrition during that age interval, and vice versa, and in this sense the observed difference at most provides a qualitative assessment of the average causal effect of a nutritional shortage, which is the parameter of interest. In this paper we estimate this average causal effect on health outcomes later in life, by applying instrumental variable estimation, using data with self-reported periods of hunger earlier in life, with famines as instruments. The data contain samples from European countries and include birth cohorts exposed to various famines in the 20th century. We use two-sample IV estimation to deal with imperfect recollection of conditions at very early stages of life. The estimated average causal effects often exceed famine effects by a factor three.
Keywords: Nutrition, famine, ageing, developmental origins, height, blood pressure, obesity, two-sample IV
JEL Classification: I12, J11, C21, C26
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Long-Term Effects of the 1959-1961 China Famine: Mainland China and Hong Kong
By Douglas Almond, Lena Edlund, ...
-
The Long Term Health and Economic Consequences of 1959-1961 Famine in China
By Yuyu Chen and Li-an Zhou
-
Great Leap Forward or Backward? Anatomy of a Central Planning Disaster
By Mark Yuying An, Wei Li, ...
-
By Xin Meng and Nancy Qian
-
Stunting and Selection Effects of Famine: A Case Study of the Great Chinese Famine
-
The Great Escape: A Review Essay on Fogel's 'the Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100'
By Angus Deaton
-
Effects of Prenatal and Early Life Malnutrition: Evidence from the Greek Famine
By Sven Neelsen and Thomas Stratmann
-
Effects of Prenatal and Early Life Malnutrition: Evidence from the Greek Famine
By Sven Neelsen and Thomas Stratmann