Geographic clustering of longevity in a Dutch province, 1812-1962 How stable, behavior-associated environmental characteristics explain the local clustering of longevity Rick Mourits, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Email:
[email protected] Angelique Janssens, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. Email:
[email protected] The authors would like to thank Hannaliis Jaadla, Sebastian Klüsener, Jan Kok and Theo Engelen for their methodological and theoretical feedback. Furthermore, we thank the Humanities Lab, Faculty of Arts, Radboud University for providing the map with Zeeland islands and municipalities. Abstract There are places that bring forth unexpectedly large numbers of long-lived individuals. In this study, we explore which factors affect geographic clustering of longevity and indicate whether survival advantages occur early in life, later in life, or over the entire lifespan. 150 years of mortality data are used to reconstruct the lifespans of the 1812-1862 Zeeland cohort, resulting in a sample of 176,577 individuals from 101 municipalities. We found evidence of longevity clustering for women. Geographic patterns in longevity were similar for men, but not statistically significant. For both sexes, the environment affects individuals over the entire life course and not in early or later life only. Inhabitants of neighboring municipalities resemble each other in their chances to become long-lived, because their hometowns had similar agricultural practices, demographic pressure, and levels of poverty, whereas the religious denomination or population density of a municipality had no effect on individual chances to become long-lived. Our findings underline the importance of the living environment for individual chances to become long-lived.