The historical population of the Krummhörn region [1720-1850] in the northwest of Germany can be characterized as a non-industrialized, pre-capitalist agricultural society. Around 70 percent of the families had either no land or owned farms too small to ensure subsistence, and therefore worked...

Background: Epigenetic inheritance is a potentially important determinant of health in several mammals. For humans, the existing evidence is weak. We investigate whether disease exposure triggers functional epigenetic inheritance among humans by analyzing siblings who were conceived under...

This paper presents a toolkit for measuring and analysing inter-individual inequality in length of life by Gini coefficient. Gini coefficient is treated as an additional function of the life table. A new method for the estimation of Gini coefficient from life table data has been developed and...

In this paper, a multilevel approach is used to investigate whether and how regional social contexts influence first and second birth probabilities of women living in western Germany during the 1980s and 1990s. In the theoretical part it is argued that regional opportunity structures as well as...

Objective: Epigenetic inheritance has been suggested to be an important factor influencing mortality. We use historical Québec data (years 1670-1759) to study whether parents modify epigenetically their offspring’s phenotype prior to conception in response to predicted/perceived mortality. If...

Parental death precipitates a cascade of events leading to more or less detrimental exposures, from the sudden and dramatic interruption of parental care through the cohabitation with step parents and siblings in a recomposed family. This paper compares the effect of early parental loss on the...