THE ENGINE AND THE REAPER: INDUSTRIALIZATION AND MORTALITY IN LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY JAPAN

John Tang

Journal of Health Economics, 2017, vol. 56, issue C, 145-162

Abstract: Economic development improves long-run health outcomes through access to medical treatment, sanitation, and higher income. Short run impacts, however, may be ambiguous given disease exposure from market integration. Using a panel dataset of Japanese vital statistics and multiple estimation methods, I find that railroad network expansion is associated with a six percent increase in gross mortality rates among newly integrated regions. Communicable diseases accounted for most of the rail-associated mortality, which indicate railways behaved as transmission vectors. At the same time, market integration facilitated by railways corresponded with an eighteen percent increase in total capital investment nationwide over ten years.

Keywords: difference-in-differences; matching estimators; market integration; mortality Kuznets curve; transportation infrastructure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 J61 N75 O24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629617308305
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The engine and the reaper: The impact of industrialisation on mortality in early modern Japan (2016)
Working Paper: THE ENGINE AND THE REAPER: INDUSTRIALIZATION AND MORTALITY IN EARLY MODERN JAPAN (2015)
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:145-162

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2017.09.004

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 ().