Unequal mortality during the Spanish Flu

Sergi Basco, Jordi Domenech and Joan Rosés

Economic History Working Papers from London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Economic History

Abstract: The outburst of deaths and cases of Covid-19 around the world has renewed the interest to understand the mortality effects of pandemics across regions, occupations, age and gender. The Spanish Flu is the closest pandemic to Covid-19. Mortality rates in Spain were among the largest in today’s developed countries. Our research documents a substantial heterogeneity on mortality rates across occupations. The highest mortality was on low-income workers. We also record a rural mortality penalty that reversed the historical urban penalty temporally. The higher capacity of certain social groups to isolate themselves from social contact could explain these mortality differentials. However, adjusting mortality evidence by these two factors, there were still large mortality inter-provincial differences for the same occupation and location, suggesting the existence of a regional component in rates of flu contagion possibly related to climatic differences.

Keywords: pandemics; health inequality; socio-economic mortality differences; urban penalty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D6 I18 J15 N0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2021-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-his and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/108853/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Unequal Mortality During the Spanish Flu (2022)
Working Paper: Unequal Mortality during the Spanish Flu (2021)
Working Paper: Unequal mortality during the Spanish Flu (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:wpaper:108853

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