Imposing Policy on Reluctant Actors: The Hospital Desegregation Campaign and Black Postneonatal Mortality in the Deep South

D. Mark Anderson, Kerwin Kofi Charles and Daniel Rees

No 27970, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: In 1966, Southern hospitals were barred from participating in Medicare unless they discontinued their longstanding practice of racial segregation. Using data from five Deep South states and exploiting county-level variation in Medicare certification dates, we find that gaining access to an ostensibly integrated hospital had no effect on Black postneonatal mortality. Similarly, there is little evidence that the campaign contributed to the trend towards in-hospital births among Southern Black mothers. These results are consistent with descriptions of the hospital desegregation campaign as producing only cosmetic changes and illustrate the limits of anti-discrimination policies imposed upon reluctant actors.

JEL-codes: I1 I14 J1 N12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-his and nep-ure
Note: DAE EH
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27970.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:nbr:nberwo:27970

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w27970

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().