This study analyzes the intergenerational effects of late childbearing on offspring's adult longevity in a population in Utah (United States) that does not display evidence of parity-specific birth control-a so-called natural fertility population. Studies have found that for women who experience late menopause and prolonged reproduction, aging is postponed and longevity is increased. This is believed to indicate female "robustness" and the impact of biological or genetic factors. If indeed there is a genetic component involved, one would expect to also find evidence for the intergenerational transmission of longevity benefits. Our study investigates the relationship between prolonged natural fertility of mothers and their offspring's survival rates in adulthood. Gompertz regression models (N = 7,716) revealed that the offspring of mothers who were naturally fertile until a relatively advanced age lived significantly longer. This observed positive effect of late reproduction was not independent of but conditional upon survival of the mother to the end of her fecundity (defined as age 50). Offspring's relative risks at death beyond age 50 were 6-12 percent lower than those of their counterparts born to mothers who had an average age at last birth. Our results, which account for various early, adult, and later-life conditions, as well as shared frailty, suggest that there is a positive relationship between mother's age at last birth and offspring longevity, and strengthen the notion that age at menopause is a good predictor of this relationship.

Much of the previous scholarship on the historical living arrangements of the aged has taken place without the benefit of large-scale harmonised census microdata and did not embrace even rudimentary forms of spatial modelling. Drawing on the pooled cross-sectional census microdata from the North Atlantic Population and Mosaic projects, we derive measures of intergenerational co-residence among the elderly for 277 regional populations from Catalonia to the Urals during the demographic ancien régime and thereafter. To examine the historical geography of living arrangements among the elderly, the spatial patterns in our data are assessed using formal tools of Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis. To investigate the extent to which the observed regional patterns are attributable to underlying demographic, socioeconomic, or environmental variability, we specified a series of the OLS regression models and applied the Local Indicators of Spatial Association to the models' residuals in order to identify the spatial clusters that cannot be explained by the chosen set of predictors. Our findings reveal considerable variability in the living arrangements of the elderly in historic Europe. This variability does not align very neatly with the geographic patterns predicted by earlier historical demographic literature and partly persists even after controlling for contextual factors. Our bottom-line results suggest that when seeking to untangle the dynamics of European family systems, greater spatial awareness is indispensable.

Using data collected during the inter-war period, the article seeks to identify long-term biological effects of food shortages and the increased incidence of contagious diseases during the First World War on a population of pupils of Cracow schools. This goal is achieved through an analysis of the remaining source materials from 1919-33 concerning the height of the population in question. The study found that the impact of the war manifests itself in a lower average height of pupils born in 1915 and in delayed puberty among the cohorts of 1912-15. The article also lists the potential consequences of such drastic long-term effects of the war.

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