Early Life Circumstances and Mortality among Older Adults in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa

Mary McEniry, University of Wisconsin at Madison

We examine mortality of older adults born during the late 1920s and early 1940s to test the conjecture that countries which most probably produced a larger number of survivors of poor early childhood conditions as a result of public health interventions and medical technology largely in the absence of improvements in standard of living are also countries where older obese adults and/or adults with heart disease or diabetes exhibit a higher excess of relative risk of mortality. Using a cross national diverse sample of adults 60+ years from major studies on aging in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, the US, UK and the Netherlands, we construct several Waaler-type surfaces to estimate expected relative risk of mortality and then excess mortality. We expect to find that in the aforementioned countries older obese adults and/or adults with heart disease or diabetes exhibit a higher excess of relative risk of mortality.