Abstract
This research project proposes to study the phenomenon of familial influences on early death and exceptional survival in the Netherlands between 1812 and 2015 from an innovative framework taking into account the simultaneous effects of resources, germs and genetic influences. ?Resources? are defined in socio-economic, and cultural terms; ?germs? refers to the disease environment, and ?genetic influences? refers to an individual?s genetically determined predisposition for exceptional survival or the lack thereof. The influence of these factors will be studied through a multi-generational approach in which we follow families over a time span of 200 years. The goal is to uncover the role of familial influences on survival and the changing interactions between social-structural and biological-genetic factors in mortality and longevity within changing disease environments from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries until today. This project is innovative in three ways. First, we introduce the family as the central unit of analysis; this is novel as historians have always focussed on sets of single, unrelated deaths. The second innovation is the inclusion of longevity in the past. This issue has not yet been studied by historians which is surprising given the dramatic increases in life expectancy in the past 200 years. Moreover, we assume that early death and adult longevity are interrelated categories: understanding one is necessary for understanding the other. Finally, we introduce genetics into the study of historical mortality since recent advances in human genetics have shown the relevance of the genetic component for longevity and mortality.