Medical Technology and Life Expectancy: Evidence from the Antitoxin Treatment of Diphtheria

Philipp Ager, Casper Hansen and Peter Lin

No 241, Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES)

Abstract: This paper studies the impact of the first effective medical treatment for an infectious disease -diphtheria antitoxin- on the historical health transition in the United States. Using an instrumental variable for local antitoxin adoption rates and information from approximately 1.6 million death certificates from 1880 to 1914, we find that the rapid diffusion of antitoxin led to a substantial decline in diphtheria mortality rates and increased life expectancy at birth. Exposure to antitoxin also significantly reduced school absenteeism. Overall, our results suggest that medicine played a more important role in increasing life expectancy in the early 20th century than previously thought.

Keywords: Life expectancy; medical technology; antitoxin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 J11 N32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 67 pages
Date: 2023-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in 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://www.ehes.org/wp/EHES_241.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Medical Technology and Life Expectancy: Evidence From the Antitoxin Treatment of Diphtheria (2024)
Working Paper: Medical Technology and Life Expectancy: Evidence from the Antitoxin Treatment of Diphtheria (2023)
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:hes:wpaper:0241

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from European Historical Economics Society (EHES) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Paul Sharp ().