Commentary: do older men and women gain equally from improving childhood conditions?

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Abstract
The relationship between early and late mortality within cohorts has been well-established.1–4 Catalano and Bruckner add evidence that birth cohorts subjected to higher mortality ‘than expected’ before age 5 have higher mortality ‘than expected’ after age 5.5 Their contribution employed evidence from three countries to document a link between cohort mortality at younger and older ages. Methods developed for time-series analysis were used to correct for trends, cycles, and autocorrelation. After eliminating the effect of a common trend, this analysis further supports the link between early and late life mortality in cohorts. A novel aspect finding is a sex difference: the link between mortality before age 5 and later age mortality is stronger for men than for women. The authors suggest that this might be due to the ‘relative resiliency’ of females compared to males across the ages.