The Effect of Traffic Safety Laws and Obesity Rates on Living Organ Donations

Jose Fernandez () and Lisa Stohr

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper uses variation in traffic safety laws and obesity rates to identify substitution patterns between living and cadaveric kidney donors. Using panel data from 1988-2008, we find that a 1% decrease in the supply of cadaveric donors per 100,000 increases the supply of living donors per 100,000 by .7%. With respect to traffic safety laws, a national adoption of partial helmet laws is estimated to decrease cadaveric donors by 6%, but leads to a 4.2% increase in the number of living donors, or a net effect of 1.8% decrease in the supply of kidney donations. The recent rise in obesity rates is estimated to increase living donor rates by roughly 18%. Lastly, we find evidence that increases in disposable income per capita is associated with an increase in the number of non-biological living donors within a state, but is not found to have an effect on biological donor rates.

Keywords: organ donations; fatalities; seat belt; helmet laws; altruism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D62 D64 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-08-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:17033

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