Abstract
A growing body of research supports the Barker hypothesis that adverse conditions around the time of birth have a negative effect on health. Nevertheless, the mechanisms linking early life conditions with health are still unclear. This paper investigates one of such potential mechanisms, specifically, ambient stress, by analyzing the effect of economic downturns as a stressor on the probability of Cesarean Delivery (CD). I focus particularly on male CD since the literature reports that male fetuses are more sensitive to stressors in utero than female fetuses. Using data from Lifelines, a large cohort study from the northern Netherlands, I show that the probability of CD for male babies increases when unemployment levels rise. This result suggests that maternal stress might be one of the mechanisms how early life economic conditions affect health.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 100816 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-11 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Economics and Human Biology |
Volume | 36 |
Early online date | 7 Sept 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jan 2020 |
Funding
The author wishes to acknowledge the services of the LifeLines Cohort Study, the contributing research centres delivering data to LifeLines, and all the study participants. LifeLines is a multi-disciplinary prospective population-based cohort study examining in a unique three-generation design the health and health-related behaviours of 167,729 persons living in the North East region of The Netherlands. It employs a broad range of investigative procedures in assessing the biomedical, socio-demographic, behavioural, physical and psychological factors which contribute to the health and disease of the general population, with a special focus on multimorbidity. In addition, the LifeLines project comprises a number of cross-sectional sub-studies which investigate specific age-related conditions. These include investigations into metabolic and hormonal diseases, including obesity, cardiovascular and renal diseases, pulmonary diseases and allergy, cognitive function and depression, and musculoskeletal conditions. The LifeLines Cohort Study, and generation and management of GWAS genotype data for the LifeLines Cohort Study is supported by the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research NWO (grant 175.010.2007.006 ), the Economic Structure Enhancing Fund (FES) of the Dutch government, the Ministry of Economic Affairs , the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science , the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Sports , the Northern Netherlands Collaboration of Provinces (SNN) , the Province of Groningen, University Medical Center Groningen , the University of Groningen , Dutch Kidney Foundation and Dutch Diabetes Research Foundation . This study was supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) and benefitted from comments received from the audiences at the EUHEA conference 2018, iHEA conference 2017 and the NIDI/RUG workshop on Socioeconomic differences and health in 2016. I thank Rob Alessie, Viola Angelini and Jochen Mierau for their helpful input in developing this study. Appendix A
Funders | Funder number |
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Economic Structure Enhancing Fund | |
Ministry for Health, Welfare and Sports | |
Ministry of Education, Culture and Science | |
Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research NWO | 175.010.2007.006 |
Fusion Energy Sciences | |
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen | |
Nierstichting | |
Ministerie van Volksgezondheid, Welzijn en Sport | |
Diabetes Fonds | |
Ministerie van Economische Zaken | |
Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap | |
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | |
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung |
Keywords
- Cesarean Delivery
- Cohort studies
- Early-life conditions
- Health
- Stress
- Unemployment