Historical Sample of the Netherlands

I have talked a lot about the Dutch LISS Panel as being one of the world's most useful data resource for social science. It has been nominated for a Dutch award for data dissemination. Along with it was nominated the eventual winner, the Historical Sample of the Netherlands. This is a mindblowing data infrastructure. From their website "The HSN offers a representative sample of about 78,000 people born in the Netherlands during the period 1812-1922. The HSN-database containing individual life-courses is a unique tool for research in Dutch history and demography." It is well worth a browse through the projects and data that is linked on their site.

The following project is one example of how they are using the data.

The project 'Early Life Conditions, Social Mobility and Longevity' (ESM) is an international project, supervised by prof. George Alter (Indiana University, Bloomington), and for the main part financed by the National Institute of Aging (National Institute of Health, Washington D.C.). The Dutch part is carried out by dr. F.W.A. van Poppel, from the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI). The cooperation with the HSN consists of building the database 'Inequality and longevity from a life-course perspective: the Netherlands 1850-2000'.

Based on this database the long-term effects of social, economical and familial conditions during childhood on mortality in later life will be studied. Using population registers, personal cards and records of the civil registration, life courses and family compositions will be reconstructed for about 7000 children, born between 1850-1922 in the provinces of Utrecht, Zeeland and Friesland. Context variables, like the regional level of water supplies, mortality and family income, are also part of the analysis.

Dublin Walking Tour: North Inner City and Docklands

The main rationale for these tours has been the ongoing work on early childhood conditions in the 20th century in Ireland. This has included work on infant mortality, including Brona NiChobhtaigh's thesis, and work on effects of early conditions on later health, including Mark McGovern's MA Economics thesis and our recent working paper "From Angela's Ashes to the Celtic Tiger ". In the last tour, we went around areas such as the side streets beside St Patrick's Cathedral and also covered Henrietta Street, where some of the most preserved tenements still stand. Pat Liddy did a superb job at conveying just how economically poor some of these areas were, well into the 20th century. The tour tomorrow looks at the areas around Dublin's Docklands, which are particularly interesting as they have seen some of the most dramatic changes in Ireland in the 20th century, with some of the areas making the full transition from extreme poverty to full affluence in the course of 50 years. We are currently in the field with a life reconstruction study in Ireland, meaning that we can observe some of our participants lives as they passed from growing up in such poverty through to the excesses of the Celtic Tiger. Ireland is an interesting country to examine the effects of major policy changes on people's health and well-being, due to the wide fluctuations in economic output over the last 50 years and also due to the fact that dramatic changes in health and education systems took place against a backdrop of relative political stability over most of the 20th century.

I hope that this type of activity continues in some form or another and I welcome suggestions.

IZA Paper: Early Life Conditions and Later Cognitive Decline

The Role of Early-Life Conditions in the Cognitive Decline due to Adverse Events Later in Life
by Gerard J. van den Berg, Dorly J. H. Deeg, Maarten Lindeboom, France Portrait
(February 2010)

Abstract:
Cognitive functioning of elderly individuals may be affected by events such as the loss of a (grand)child or partner or the onset of a serious chronic condition, and by negative economic shocks such as job loss or the reduction of pension benefits. It is conceivable that the impact of such events is stronger if conditions early in life were adverse. In this paper we address this using a Dutch longitudinal database that follows elderly individuals for more than 15 years and contains information on demographics, socio-economic conditions, life events, health, and cognitive functioning. We exploit exogenous variation in early-life conditions as generated by the business cycle. We also examine to what extent the cumulative effect of consecutive shocks later in life exceeds the sum of the separate effects, and whether economic and health shocks later in life reinforce each other in their effect on cognitive functioning.
Text: See Discussion Paper No. 4780