The goal of this project is to understand the extent to which individuals’ early life circumstances are creating inequalities in life chances in older age and whether and how these effects may be moderated by one’s genetic predisposition to these outcomes. The project will use data from the UK Biobank to explore the long-term effects of early life circumstances, such as prenatal pollution exposure, maternal breastfeeding, and maternal smoking. It will use state-of-the-art econometric techniques and quasi-experiments to deal with the endogeneity (i.e., confounding) of these environments, including e.g. reductions in pollution due to the introduction of the Clean Air Act, the Royal College of Physicians report that aimed to disincentivize smoking, and peer effects in breastfeeding. It will explore whether and how individuals’ genetic predisposition interacts with these environments in creating inequalities in health (incl. in cancer and cardiovascular disease) and educational outcomes (such as years of schooling).
This project is hosted at University of Bristol.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 programme under grant agreement number 101073237
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