Infant Mortality and the Repeal of Federal Prohibition

David Jacks, Krishna Pendakur and Hitoshi Shigeoka

No 2017-036, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: Exploiting a newly constructed dataset on county-level variation in prohibition status from 1933 to 1939, this paper asks two questions: what were the effects of the repeal of federal prohibition on infant mortality? And were there any significant externalities from the individual policy choices of counties and states on their neighbors? We find that dry counties with at least one wet neighbor saw baseline infant mortality increase by roughly 3% while wet counties themselves saw baseline infant mortality increase by roughly 2%. Cumulating across the six years from 1934 to 1939, our results indicate an excess of 13,665 infant deaths that could be attributable to the repeal of federal prohibition in 1933.

Keywords: federal prohibition; infant mortality; policy externalities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H73 I18 J10 N30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-hea, nep-his and nep-law
Note: FI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Jacks_ ... lity-prohibition.pdf First version, April 2017 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Infant Mortality and the Repeal of Federal Prohibition (2021)
Working Paper: Infant Mortality and the Repeal of Federal Prohibition (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hka:wpaper:2017-036

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