Using data on biomarkers and siblings to study early-life economic determinants of type-2 diabetes.

We study the effect of economic conditions early in life on the occurrence of type-2 diabetes in adulthood using contextual economic indicators and within-sibling pair variation. We use data from Lifelines: a longitudinal cohort study and biobank including 51,270 siblings born in the Netherlands from 1950 onward. Sibling fixed-effects account for selective fertility. To identify type-2 diabetes we use biomarkers on the hemoglobin A1c concentration and fasting glucose in the blood. We find that adverse economic conditions around birth increase the probability of type-2 diabetes later in life both in males and in females. Inference based on self-reported diabetes leads to biased results, incorrectly suggesting the absence of an effect. The same applies to inference that does not account for selective fertility.

Education and medication use later in life and the role of intelligence.

We investigate the association between education and disease-specific medications in old age, prescribed by medical doctors, accounting for confounders and how this association is shaped by intelligence. We use administrative data on men including prescribed medication records. To account for endogeneity of education we estimate a structural model, consisting of (i) an ordered probit for educational attainment, (ii) a Gompertz mortality model for survival up to old age, (iii) a probit model for prescribed medications in old age, (iv) a measurement system using IQ tests to identify latent intelligence. The results suggest a strong effect of education on prescribed medications for most medications, except for prescribed medication for cardiac diseases and for depression and anxiety.

Pace of aging, family environment and cognitive skills in children and adolescents.

Pace of aging is an epigenetic clock which captures the speed at which someone is biologically aging compared to the chronological-age peers. We here use data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) to investigate the interrelation between the study children's parental social class at birth, and their pace of aging and cognitive skills measures in childhood and adolescence. We show that children from lower parental social classes display faster pace of aging and that the social class gradient in pace of aging is strongest in adolescence. About one third of this association can be explained by other socio-economic and demographic covariates, as well as life events. Similarly, study children's pace of aging manifests a negative association with their measures of cognitive skills in late adolescence only. This association becomes stronger as the contemporary pace of aging of the mother becomes faster. Our results seem to identify adolescence as the period of life when pace of aging, family environment and cognitive skills measures begin to interact.