Public Health Investments and the Infant Mortality Gap: Evidence from Federal Sanitation Interventions on U.S. Indian Reservations

Tara Watson
Additional contact information
Tara Watson: Williams College

No 2005-02, Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, Williams College

Abstract: To what extent do differential levels of investment in public health inputs explain observed differences in health outcomes across socioeconomic and racial groups? This study investigates the impact of 3,700 projects that were part of a widespread Federal initiative to improve sanitation infrastructure on U.S. Indian reservations starting in 1960. Sanitation investment substantially reduced the cost of clean water for households, leading to sharp reductions in both waterborne gastrointestinal disease and infectious respiratory disease among Native American infants. The sanitation program was quite cost-effective, in part because improvements in the overall disease environment also reduced infectious respiratory disease among nearby white infants. Despite the health externalities, Federal sanitation interventions explain almost forty percent of the convergence in Native American and white infant mortality rates in reservation counties since 1970.

Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2005-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Public Economics, September 2006, v. 90, iss. 8-9, pp. 1537-60.

Downloads: (external link)
https://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/watson0805san.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to web.williams.edu:443 (SSL connect attempt failed error:0A000152:SSL routines::unsafe legacy renegotiation disabled)

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:wil:wileco:2005-02

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics, Williams College Williamstown, MA 01267. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Greg Phelan ().