A unique bond: Twin bereavement and lifespan associations of identical and fraternal twins

Gerard J. van den Berg; Bettina Drepper

doi:10.1111/rssa.12789

A unique bond: Twin bereavement and lifespan associations of identical and fraternal twins

Gerard J. van den Berg, Bettina Drepper^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Economics

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Abstract

Analyses of twin mortality often use models with dependent unobserved frailty terms capturing genetic and childhood environmental determinants. This ignores that mortality rates can be co-dependent due to bereavement effects, that is, to a causal effect of the loss of the co-twin on the mortality rate of the surviving twin. We develop a novel approach based on a model incorporating both types of dependence. We prove identification and we estimate models with Danish register data on twin pairs. Among men, losing an identical co-twin at age 75 causally reduces the remaining lifetime on average by more than a year. This bereavement effect is less severe among non-identical twins. The results are relevant for the assessment of the economic component of bereavement effects in general. Furthermore, estimates of correlations between the frailty terms by zygosity and the ensuing relative importance of genetic determinants are highly dependent on whether bereavement effects are ignored.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	677-698
Number of pages	22
Journal	Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A: Statistics in Society
Volume	185
Issue number	2
Early online date	21 Mar 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/rssa.12789
Publication status	Published - Apr 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We acknowledge valuable comments and suggestions by the Editor James Carpenter, an anonymous co‐editor, three Referees, Bo Honoré, Petyo Bonev, Georgios Effraimidis and Lena Janys. The Danish Twin Registry and Kaare Christensen kindly allowed us to use their data. Thanks to the Humboldt Foundation for financial support through their Alexander von Humboldt Professorship Prize program. The research of Bettina Drepper is financially supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through Vici grant 453‐11‐002. Part of this paper was written while Drepper was at the Universities of Mannheim and Tilburg. Previous title: ‘A Unique Bond: Does Losing Your Co‐Twin Affect Your Remaining LifeSpan?’

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Royal Statistical Society

Keywords

frailty
genetic determinants
hazard rate
identification
loss of co-twin
Mortality

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10.1111/rssa.12789

A unique bondFinal published version, 389 KBLicence: Article 25fa Dutch Copyright Act

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abstract = "Analyses of twin mortality often use models with dependent unobserved frailty terms capturing genetic and childhood environmental determinants. This ignores that mortality rates can be co-dependent due to bereavement effects, that is, to a causal effect of the loss of the co-twin on the mortality rate of the surviving twin. We develop a novel approach based on a model incorporating both types of dependence. We prove identification and we estimate models with Danish register data on twin pairs. Among men, losing an identical co-twin at age 75 causally reduces the remaining lifetime on average by more than a year. This bereavement effect is less severe among non-identical twins. The results are relevant for the assessment of the economic component of bereavement effects in general. Furthermore, estimates of correlations between the frailty terms by zygosity and the ensuing relative importance of genetic determinants are highly dependent on whether bereavement effects are ignored.",

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A unique bond: Twin bereavement and lifespan associations of identical and fraternal twins

Abstract

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Keywords

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