Maternal longevity is associated with lower infant mortality

Abstract

Objective: Referring to the multidisciplinary and multipurpose survey AKeA2, and focusing on family genealogy data on centenarian women and controls, this paper aims to verify the hypothesis that maternal longevity is associated with lower infant mortality in offspring, after having controlled for fertility characteristics, familial longevity and some contextual variables. Methods: The association between the longevity of a mother and her children's infant mortality level was assessed using a multivariate Poisson Regression Model with robust estimates, which is suitable for estimating consistently and efficiently the relative risk when binary data are used. Results: Our results show an association between longevity and infant mortality among the children of the Sardinians who survived to become centenarians. Infant mortality is significantly lower for children belonging to a mother born and living in Sassari and Oristano than Nuoro, close to each other and both located on the Western coast.

Keywords

• AKeA2 survey
• centenarians
• infant mortality
• longevity
• Sardinia