PhD Defense ‘The Interplay between Early-life Conditions, Major Events and Health Later in Life’
TI PhD student Rob Scholte will defend his dissertation entitled ‘The Interplay between Early-life Conditions, Major Events and Health Later in Life’ on Monday October 14th at the VU Amsterdam. His supervisors are professor and TI fellow Gerard van den Berg and professor and TI fellow Maarten Lindeboom.
Rob Scholte examines in his dissertation the interplay between early-life conditions, major events and health later in life. The results of his research point at the importance of conditions early in life. This emphasizes the importance of providing good education and guidance to pregnant women. The results also have implications for the demand for health care and labor market productivity of currently aging cohorts. Knowledge of long-run effects of adverse conditions early in life is as well important for the targeting of policy programs. The productivity of programs aimed at young individuals is presumably relatively high. Finally, this dissertation provide insight into the health effects of major life events and ease the identification of individuals who are most vulnerable to these shocks. Rob Scholte concludes: in utero malnutrition has long-run effects on hospitalization rates and labor market participation. Furthermore, a differential impact of major adverse life events is an underlying part of the widely documented relation between early-life conditions and health later in life.