Overweight and obesity at age 19 after pre-natal famine exposure.

Background: Weight for height has been used in the past as an indicator of obesity to report that prenatal exposure to the Dutch famine of 1944-1945 determined subsequent obesity. Further evaluation is needed as unresolved questions remain about the possible impact of social class differences in fertility decline during the famine and because being overweight is now defined by a Body Mass Index (BMI: kg/m) from 25 to <30 and obesity by a BMI of 30 or more.

Methods: We studied heights and weights of 371,100 men in the Netherlands born between 1943 and 1947 and examined for military service at age 19.

Parental lifespan and the likelihood of reaching the age of 90 years in the Netherlands Cohort Study.

Aim: Growing evidence suggests an association between parental longevity and lifespan of subsequent generations. We aimed to reproduce earlier findings, showing a positive association between parental longevity and offspring's longevity. Additionally, we investigated whether this is mainly driven by the maternal or paternal germline in male and female offspring.

Female reproductive factors and the likelihood of reaching the age of 90 years. The Netherlands Cohort Study.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to prospectively assess the relationship between several reproductive factors in women and the likelihood of reaching the age of 90 years (achieving longevity).

Study Design: For this study, data from the oldest birth cohort (1916-17) of the prospective Netherlands Cohort Study (NLCS) were used. These participants filled in a baseline questionnaire in 1986 (at age 68-70 years).

The 100-plus Study of cognitively healthy centenarians: rationale, design and cohort description.

Although the incidence of dementia increases exponentially with age, some individuals reach more than 100 years with fully retained cognitive abilities. To identify the characteristics associated with the escape or delay of cognitive decline, we initiated the 100-plus Study ( www.100plus.

[Medical training did not give survival advantage; life expectancy of Dutch medical professionals born between 1550 and 1909].

Objective: To examine if, over a period of centuries, the Dutch medical establishment enjoyed a survival advantage over a population group with a comparable social background and level of education.

Design: Retrospective database research.

Method: We used documents which provided data on the births and deaths of 15,649 male and 659 female medical professionals and of 15,304 male clergy.

Agency in Fertility Decisions in Western Europe During the Demographic Transition: A Comparative Perspective.

We use a set of linked reproductive histories taken from Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain for the period 1871-1960 to address key issues regarding how reproductive change was linked specifically to mortality and survivorship and more generally to individual agency. Using event-history analysis, this study investigates how the propensity to have additional children was influenced by the number of surviving offspring when reproductive decisions were made. The results suggest that couples were continuously regulating their fertility to achieve reproductive goals.

War-related excess mortality in The Netherlands, 1944-45: New estimates of famine- and non-famine-related deaths from national death records.

Despite there being several estimates for famine-related deaths in the west of The Netherlands during the last stage of World War II, no such information exists for war-related excess mortality among the civilian population from other areas of the country. Previously unavailable data files from Statistics Netherlands allow researchers to estimate the number of war-related excess deaths during the last stage of the war in the whole country. This study uses a seasonal-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 at a total of close to 91,000 (75%) excess deaths.

Can resource dilution explain differences in height by birth order and family size? A study of 389,287 male recruits in twentieth-century Netherlands.

'Resource dilution' has been invoked as a possible mechanism to explain the inverse relation between sibship size and sibling heights in European populations (Öberg, 2015). Alternative explanations include confounding of the relation by other measured or unmeasured family characteristics including socio-economic position or birth order. It is difficult to quantify the contribution of any factor in isolation.

Early-life conditions and adult mortality decline in Dutch cohorts born 1812-1921.

Mounting evidence suggests that early-life conditions have an enduring effect on an individual's mortality risks as an adult. The contribution of improvements in early-life conditions to the overall decline in adult mortality, however, remains a debated issue. We provide an estimate of the contribution of improvements in early-life conditions to mortality decline after age 30 in Dutch cohorts born between 1812 and 1921.

The Trade-Off between Female Fertility and Longevity during the Epidemiological Transition in the Netherlands.

Several hypotheses have been put forward to explain the relationship between women's fertility and their post-reproductive longevity. In this study, we focus on the disposable soma theory, which posits that a negative relationship between women's fertility and longevity can be understood as an evolutionary trade-off between reproduction and survival. We examine the relationship between fertility and longevity during the epidemiological transition in the Netherlands.

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.

The Adoption of Smoking and Its Effect on the Mortality Gender Gap in Netherlands: A Historical Perspective.

We examine in depth the effect of differences in the smoking adoption patterns of men and women on the mortality gender gap in Netherlands, employing a historical perspective. Using an indirect estimation technique based on observed lung cancer mortality from 1931 to 2012, we estimated lifetime smoking prevalence and smoking-attributable mortality. We decomposed the sex difference in life expectancy at birth into smoking-related and nonsmoking-related overall and cause-specific mortality.

Prenatal famine exposure and adult mortality from cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other causes through age 63 years.

Nutritional conditions in early life may affect adult health, but prior studies of mortality have been limited to small samples. We evaluated the relationship between pre-/perinatal famine exposure during the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-1945 and mortality through age 63 years among 41,096 men born in 1944-1947 and examined at age 18 years for universal military service in the Netherlands. Of these men, 22,952 had been born around the time of the Dutch famine in 6 affected cities; the remainder served as unexposed controls.

Differences in height by education among 371,105 Dutch military conscripts.

Adult height is associated with a variety of familial and socio-economic factors and large, well-defined populations are needed for a reliable assessment of their relative contributions. We therefore analyzed recorded heights from the military health examinations of 18-year conscripts in the Netherlands born between 1944 and 1947 and observed large differences by their attained education and by their father's occupation. The 5.

Too old to have children? Lessons from natural fertility populations.

Study Question: Is it possible to construct an age curve denoting the ages above which women are biologically too old to reproduce?

Summary Answer: We constructed a curve based on the distribution of female age at last birth in natural fertility populations reflecting the ages above which women have become biologically too old to have children.

What Is Known Already: The median age at last birth (ALB) for females is ∼40-41 years of age across a range of natural fertility populations. This suggests that there is a fairly universal pattern of age-related fertility decline.

Arts and ageing; life expectancy of historical artists in the Low Countries.

Practising arts has been linked to lowering stress, anxiety and blood pressure. These mechanisms are all known to affect the ageing process. Therefore, we examine the relation between long-term involvement in arts and life expectancy at age 50 (LE50), in a cohort of 12,159 male acoustic, literary and visual artists, who were born between 1700 and 1899 in the Low Countries.

Life expectancy of artists in the Low Countries from the fifteenth to the twentieth century.

We investigated the role that urbanization and plague may have played in changes in life expectancy amongst artists in the Low Countries who were born between 1450 and 1909. Artists can be considered to be representative of a middle-class population living mostly in urban areas. The dataset was constructed using biographical information collected by the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie in The Hague, the Netherlands.

Historical trends in the correlation of sibling deaths in infancy in the Netherlands.

In this article, we study temporal, regional, and social variation in infant and childhood death clustering in The Netherlands, using data from three provinces. The data relate to children born in 90,000 marriages contracted between the beginning and the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Descriptive indicators show that death clustering was more frequent in the province of Zeeland and more common in the lower classes, and that it increased in two provinces over time.

Marital fertility decline in the Netherlands: child mortality, real wages, and unemployment, 1860-1939.

Previous studies of the fertility decline in Europe are often limited to an earlier stage of the marital fertility decline, when the decline tended to be slower and before the large increase in earnings in the 1920s. Starting in 1860 (before the onset of the decline), this study follows marital fertility trends until 1939, when fertility reached lower levels than ever before. Using data from the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN), this study shows that mortality decline, a rise in real income, and unemployment account for the decline in the Netherlands.

Relatives as spouses: preferences and opportunities for kin marriage in a Western society.

This article investigates the determinants of kin marriage on the basis of a large-scale database covering a major rural part of The Netherlands during the period 1840-1922. We studied three types of kin marriage: first cousin marriage, deceased spouse's sibling marriage, and sibling set exchange marriage. Almost 2% of all marriages were between first cousins, 0.

Marriage Timing over the Generations.

Strong relationships have been hypothesized between the timing of marriage and the familial environment of the couple. Sociologists have identified various mechanisms via which the age at marriage in the parental generation might be related to the age at marriage of the children. In our paper we study this relationship for historical populations.

Widowhood, family size, and post-reproductive mortality: a comparative analysis of three populations in nineteenth-century Europe.

Researchers from a number of disciplines have offered competing theories about the effects oJ childbearing on parents 'postreproductive longevity. The "disposable soma theory" argues that investments in somatic maintenance increase longevity but reduce childbearing. "Maternal depletion" models suggest that the rigors of childrearing increase mortality in later years.

Religious differentials in marital fertility in The Hague (Netherlands) 1860-1909.

Previous studies of the marital fertility transition in Europe have found religious differentials. Using data collected from the population registers of The Hague, our aim in this study is to search for answers to the following questions: whether religious differentials result from socio-economic characteristics; to what extent religious ideology explains the behaviour of religious groups; which proximate determinants account for the religious differentials; and whether the Jews were forerunners in the marital fertility transition in Europe. The results provide some evidence of relatively low levels of parity-dependent fertility control among Jews before the transition and among Catholics during the transition.

Founder mutations among the Dutch.

Many genetic disorders demonstrate mutations that can be traced to a founder, sometimes a person who can be identified. These founder mutations have generated considerable interest, because they facilitate studies of prevalence and penetrance and can be used to quantify the degree of homogeneity within a population. This paper reports on founder mutations among the Dutch and relates their occurrence to the history and demography of the Netherlands.