Aging and Death under a Dollar a Day

Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

No 13683, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper uses household survey data form several developing countries to investigate whether the poor (defined as those living under $1 or $2 dollars a day at PPP) and the non poor have different mortality rates in old age. We construct a proxy measure of longevity, which is the probability that an adult's mother and father are alive. The non-poor's mothers are more likely to be alive than the poor's mothers. Using panel data set for Indonesia and Vietnam, we also find that older adults are significantly more likely to have died five years later if they are poor. The direction of causality is unclear: the poor may be poor because they are sick (and thus more likely to die), or they could die because they are poor.

JEL-codes: I12 I32 O12 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dev, nep-hea, nep-ltv and nep-sea
Date: 2007-12
Note: AG
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