IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2507.08159.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Long-term Health and Human Capital Effects of Early-Life Economic Conditions

Author

Listed:
  • Ruijun Hou

    (Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Leicester
    School of Economics, University of Bristol)

  • Samuel Baker

    (School of Economics, University of Bristol)

  • Stephanie von Hinke

    (School of Economics, University of Bristol
    Institute for Fiscal Studies
    Institute for the Study of Labor)

  • Hans H. Sievertsen

    (The Danish Center for Social Science Research, VIVE
    School of Economics, University of Bristol
    Institute for the Study of Labor)

  • Emil S{o}rensen

    (School of Economics, University of Bristol)

  • Nicolai Vitt

    (School of Economics, University of Bristol)

Abstract

We study the long-term health and human capital impacts of local economic conditions experienced during the first 1,000 days of life. We combine historical data on monthly unemployment rates in urban England and Wales 1952-1967 with data from the UK Biobank on later-life outcomes. Leveraging variation in unemployment driven by national industry-specific shocks weighted by industry's importance in each area, we find no evidence that small, common fluctuations in local economic conditions during the early life period affect health or human capital in older age.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruijun Hou & Samuel Baker & Stephanie von Hinke & Hans H. Sievertsen & Emil S{o}rensen & Nicolai Vitt, 2025. "Long-term Health and Human Capital Effects of Early-Life Economic Conditions," Papers 2507.08159, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2507.08159
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.08159
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2507.08159. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.