Sibling Similarity in Old Age Mortality

Federica Querin, University of Bologna
Benedetta Scotti, Bocconi University
Nicola Barban , University of Bologna

It is well established that family of origin plays an important role in shaping survival chances around birth and in adult life. Less is known about whether, and to what extent, family of origin shapes survival chances in old age. A few studies, based on restricted pedigree data, find that siblings of centenarians have a significant mortality advantage compared to the average population which persists into old age. Still, whether the influence of family of origin in old age mortality patterns holds in population-wide settings is an open question. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study to explore similarity in sibling mortality among seniors in a population-wide settings. In doing so, this work contributes to the understanding of both mortality inequalities and intergenerational transmission of longevity. We compare sibling dyads and unrelated dyads who share parental and background characteristics following the methodology suggested in Raab et al. (2014). To do so, we combine data from multiple US administrative data sources, including the 1920 and 1940 census, CenSoc DMF dataset, and the Social Security Administration Death Master file (SSDM). Preliminary results suggest that siblings’ longevity is more similar than that of matched-but-unrelated dyads.

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 Presented in Session 5. Kinship Demography: Mortality Risks, Inequalities and Longevity.