From Costa:
“How important is economic growth to long-run increases in longevity? I argue that we have underestimated the role of early economic growth in the health improvements we saw after 1870 because we have ignored ancestral effects. Past and present economic conditions are in the genome. Changes in variance in the food supply at critical ancestral ages trigger changes in gene function which are then inherited. One of the accomplishments of the move towards a modern economy has been the reduction in variance.”
