Water Purification Efforts and the Black-White Infant Mortality Gap, 1906-1938

D. Mark Anderson (dwight.anderson@montana.edu), Kerwin Kofi Charles (kerwin.charles@yale.edu), Daniel I. Rees (daniel.rees@uc3m.es) and Tianyi Wang (tianyiwang.wang@utoronto.ca)
Additional contact information
D. Mark Anderson: Montana State University
Kerwin Kofi Charles: Yale University
Daniel I. Rees: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Tianyi Wang: University of Toronto

No 12783, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: According to Troesken (2004), efforts to purify municipal water supplies at the turn of the 20th century dramatically improved the relative health of blacks. There is, however, little empirical evidence to support the Troesken hypothesis. Using city-level data published by the U.S. Bureau of the Census for the period 1906-1938, we explore the relationship between water purification efforts and the black-white infant mortality gap. Our results suggest that, while water filtration was effective across the board, adding chlorine to the water supply reduced mortality only among black infants. Specifically, chlorination is associated with an 11 percent reduction in black infant mortality and a 13 percent reduction in the black-white infant mortality gap. We also find that chlorination led to a substantial reduction in the black-white diarrhea mortality gap among children under the age of 2, although this estimate is measured with less precision.

Keywords: black-white infant mortality gap; public health; infant mortality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 J11 J15 N3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2019-11
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)

Published - published in: Journal of Urban Economics, 2021, 122, 103329.

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12783.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:iza:izadps:dp12783

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
library@iza.org

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte (hinte@iza.org).