Where do people live longer?

Ọláyínká Oyèkọ́lá
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Olayinka Oyekola

Research in Economics, 2021, vol. 75, issue 1, 21-44

Abstract: Can historical exposures of non-European countries to European migrants explain part of their current health outcomes? We find that higher European share of the colonial population robustly raised life expectancy and reduced both fertility and infant mortality rates of present-day population in these former colonies. Specifically, after controlling for other plausible determinants, our baseline results imply that, on average, countries at the 95th percentile of the European share of the colonial population, compared to those at the 5th percentile, live 17 years longer, have 1 less child, and experience 54 fewer infant deaths per 1000 live births. A causal interpretation is given to these results by considering various identification strategies. Overall, our results indicate that health fortunes around the world, on average, improved because of European colonial settlers and that differences in the current levels of health performance can be traced back to differential levels of European colonial settlements, where countries that experienced higher influx of colonial Europeans have better health prosperity nowadays than countries with lower inflow of colonial Europeans. A puzzlement arises, however, as countries with no colonial European settlements have outperformed countries with low colonial European settlements. Thus, explaining this phenomenon and exploring how historical migration holds such an enduring influence on the health of nations today opens up an important avenue for future research.

Keywords: History; Migration; European colonial population; Longevity; Fertility; Mortality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B15 F63 I10 J10 N30 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090944320303811
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:reecon:v:75:y:2021:i:1:p:21-44

DOI: 10.1016/j.rie.2020.10.010

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Economics is currently edited by Federico Etro

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