Public health regulation and mortality: Evidence from early 20th century milk laws

Sarah Komisarow

Journal of Health Economics, 2017, vol. 56, issue C, 126-144

Abstract: In this paper, I estimate the impact of city-level public health regulations in the market for cow's milk on the mortality of infants and young children between 1900 and 1920. I find that the introduction of city-level dairy farm inspections reduced mortality from Diarrhea & Enteritis for one-year-old children by 1.3 annual deaths per thousand, a 14 percent effect relative to the baseline rate for this cause and a 3 percent effect relative to the baseline rate for all causes for this age group. Back-of-the-envelope calculations reveal that the benefits from these regulations exceeded costs by at least a factor of two.

Keywords: Public health; Mortality; Economic history; Infants and children (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (24)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629616304842
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jhecon:v:56:y:2017:i:c:p:126-144

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.07.010

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire

More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().