150 Years of temperature-related excess mortality in the Netherlands

Even in present-day high-income countries, there is a lot of evidence of a high degree of vulnerability of the population to both high and low outdoor temperatures. The magnitude of temperature-related mortality is strongly related to a wide variety of social, economic, and behavioural factors. To gain insight into the changing impact of cold and heat on mortality, we analyze Dutch individual death records in relation to daily temperature for the period 1855-2006 for one of the 11 Dutch provinces. Making use of negative binomial regression analysis, we study whether the effect of temperature varied by age, sex, and social class, and analyze the changes in the vulnerability to temperature fluctuations.cold spells, heat waves, infant mortality, mortality, Netherlands, temperature

Gains in Life Expectancy Associated with Higher Education in Men

Background: Many studies show large differences in life expectancy across the range of education, intelligence, and socio-economic status. As educational attainment, intelligence, and socio-economic status are highly interrelated, appropriate methods are required to disentangle their separate effects. The aim of this paper is to present a novel method to estimate gains in life expectancy specifically associated with increased education. Our analysis is based on a structural model in which education level, IQ at age 18 and mortality all depend on (latent) intelligence. The model allows for (selective) educational choices based on observed factors and on an unobserved factor capturing intelligence. Our estimates are based on information from health examinations of military conscripts born in 1944–1947 in The Netherlands and their vital status through age 66 (n = 39,798). Results: Our empirical results show that men with higher education have lower mortality. Using structural models to account for education choice, the estimated gain in life expectancy for men moving up one educational level ranges from 0.3 to 2 years. The estimated gain in months alive over the observational period ranges from -1.2 to 5.7 months. The selection effect is positive and amounts to a gain of one to two months. Decomposition of the selection effect shows that the gain from selection on (latent) intelligence is larger than the gain from selection on observed factors and amounts to 1.0 to 1.7 additional months alive. Conclusion: Our findings confirm the strong selection into education based on socio-economic status and intelligence. They also show significant higher life expectancy among individuals with higher education after the selectivity of education choice has been taken into account. Based on these estimates, it is plausible therefore that increases in education could lead to increases in life expectancy

War- and famine-related excess mortality among civilians in the Netherlands, 1944-1945

National estimates exist for war- and famine-related deaths in the Netherlands during the last stages of World War II, but no such estimates are available at the local level. To fill this information gap, this article aims at mapping and visualizing the timing of war- and famine-related excess mortality by municipality among the civilian population within the Netherlands. We use mortality statistics at the level of municipalities because these are the smallest administrative units for which this information is available. We use a seasonally adjusted mortality model combined with a difference-in-difference approach to estimate the number of excess deaths in the period between January 1944 and July 1945 separately for each Dutch municipality

Spatial inequalities in infant survival at an early stage of the longevity revolution:a pan-European view across 5000+ regions and localities in 1910

Spatial inequalities in human development are of great concern for international organisations and national governments. Demographic indicators like the infant mortality rate are important measures for determining these inequalities. The availability of demographic indicators over long time periods at relatively high levels of geographical detail allows us to examine long-term continuities and changes in spatial inequalities