Inwood Kris, Oxley Les, Roberts Evan
Departments of Economics and History, University of Guelph, Mackinnon Building, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G 2W1, Canada.
Department of Economics, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton, New Zealand.
Explor Econ Hist. 2022 Oct;86. doi: 10.1016/j.eeh.2022.101472. Epub 2022 Aug 12.
How have health and social mortality risks changed over time? Evidence from pre-1945 cohorts is sparse, mostly from the United States, and evidence is mixed on long-term changes in the risk of being overweight. We develop a dataset of men entering the NZ army in the two world wars, with objectively measured height and weight, and socioeconomic status in early adulthood. Our sample includes significant numbers of indigenous Māori, providing estimates of weight and mortality risk in an indigenous population. We follow men from war's end until death, with data on more than 12,000 men from each war. Overweight and obesity were important risk factors for mortality, and associated with shorter life expectancy. However, the reduction in life expectancy associated with being overweight declined from 5 to 3 years between the two cohorts, consistent with the hypothesis that being overweight became less risky during the twentieth century.
健康和社会死亡风险随时间发生了怎样的变化?1945年以前队列的证据稀少,大多来自美国,而且关于超重风险的长期变化的证据也不一致。我们建立了一个在两次世界大战中进入新西兰军队的男性数据集,其中包括成年早期客观测量的身高、体重和社会经济地位。我们的样本中有大量的毛利原住民,从而能够估计原住民人口的体重和死亡风险。我们追踪这些男性从战争结束直至死亡的情况,每次战争都有超过12000名男性的数据。超重和肥胖是死亡的重要风险因素,且与预期寿命缩短有关。然而,两个队列之间与超重相关的预期寿命缩短从5年降至3年,这与超重风险在20世纪降低的假设一致。