Urban Mortality and the Repeal of Federal Prohibition

David Jacks, Krishna Pendakur and Hitoshi Shigeoka

No 15510, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Federal prohibition from 1920 to 1933 was one of the most ambitious policy interventions in US history. However, due to the political concessions necessary to bring about repeal, the removal of restrictions on alcohol after 1933 was not uniform. Using new data on city-level variation in alcohol prohibition from 1933 to 1936, we investigate whether the repeal of federal prohibition affected multiple causes of urban (non-infant) mortality. We find that city-level repeal is associated with a 14.7% decrease in homicide rates and a 10.1% decrease in mortality rates associated with other accidents (including accidental poisonings). Thus, the repeal of federal prohibition could have led to an annual reduction of as many as 3,400 urban deaths. Combined with previous results showing large increases in infant mortality, this suggests that nonetheless repeal most likely had negative effects on all-cause mortality and, thereby, public health in the US.

Keywords: Federal prohibition; Local option; Urban mortality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H73 I18 J1 N3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hea and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15510 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Urban mortality and the repeal of federal prohibition (2023)
Working Paper: Urban Mortality and the Repeal of Federal Prohibition (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15510

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15510

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().