Beyond Barker: Infant Mortality at Birth and Ischaemic Heart Disease in Older Age

We merge historical data on infant mortality rates to 370,000 individual records in the UK Biobank using information on local area and year of birth. We then go `beyond Barker’, first by showing that the relationship holds when including local geographic area fixed effects, but not when we exploit family data and compare siblings.

Second, we report considerable genetic heterogeneity that is robust to within-area as well as within-family analyses. Our findings show that, in areas with the lowest infant mortality rates, the effect of one’s genetic predisposition effectively vanishes. These findings suggests that advantageous environments can cushion one's genetic disease risk.

Online attendance

Interested individuals should contact healtheconomics@ese.eur.nl if they would like to attend the seminar virtually.