Browsing by Author "Saarinen, Sanni"

Finnish Civil War was fought in 1918 between conservative Whites and socialist Reds ending in the defeat of Reds. Around 80 000 Reds were placed to overcrowded prison camps to await prosecution, where approximately 13 400 POWs (prisoner of war) died due to diseases and malnutrition. While negative health effects of war and war imprisonment are widely demonstrated, evidence on long-term health outcomes among POWs and their descendants is limited. In 1973, POWs were entitled to apply pension for the imprisonment. By using a unique longitudinal data, I aim to investigate how the POW’s exposure in Finnish Civil War 1918 was associated with longevity in two generations. I used data for 7502 POWs derived from the pension applications together with 2246 identified offspring, and link it to the acts of State Criminal Court and to the register data of Statistics Finland. I used sentence length and prison camp duration as measures for the war exposure intensity in Cox proportional hazards regression to estimate war exposure intensity’s impact to later life death risk among POWs and their offspring. For sentence length, adjusted for various political and sociodemographic characteristics, POWs with 1-3 years (hazard ratio [HR] 1.11, 95% CI 1.02-1.22) and 4+ years sentences (HR 1.12, 95% CI 1.01-1.24) compared to those not sentenced had an increased death risk in 1973-2009. Adjustment for post-war educational attainment did not change the association. Results were in line when using prison camp duration quartiles as the measure. Among the offspring, POW parent’s war exposure intensity was not associated with an increased death risk with either of the measures. POW’s exposure in the Finnish Civil War 1918 was associated with increased death risk over 55 years after the end of the war. I found no evidence of intergenerational transmission of negative health consequences, which may relate to mortality selection. The findings contribute to the knowledge of the long-term effects of war on the individual across two generations, and highlight the importance of life-long support for the former POWs.