City health departments, public health expenditures, and urban mortality over 1910–1940

Lauren Hoehn‐Velasco and Elizabeth Wrigley‐Field

Economic Inquiry, 2022, vol. 60, issue 2, 929-953

Abstract: Over the early twentieth century, urban centers adopted full‐time public health departments. We show that opening full‐time administration had little observable impact on mortality. We then attempt to determine why health departments were ineffective. Our results suggest that achievements in public health occurred regardless of health department status. Further, we find that cities with and without a full‐time health department allocated similar per capita expenditures towards health administration. This health department funding also better predicts infant mortality declines. Our conclusions indicate that specific campaigns, public health systems, and funding may have been more meaningful for local health over this era.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.13038

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:bla:ecinqu:v:60:y:2022:i:2:p:929-953

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://ordering.onl ... s.aspx?ref=1465-7295

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Inquiry is currently edited by Tim Salmon

More articles in Economic Inquiry from Western Economic Association International Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().