How the Other Half Died: Immigration and Mortality in U.S. Cities

Philipp Ager, James Feigenbaum, Casper Hansen and Hui Ren Tan

The Review of Economic Studies, 2024, vol. 91, issue 1, 1-44

Abstract: Fears of immigrants as a threat to public health have a long and sordid history. At the turn of the 20th century, when immigrants made up one-third of the population in crowded American cities, contemporaries blamed high urban mortality rates on the newest arrivals. We evaluate how the implementation of country-specific immigration quotas in the 1920s affected urban health. Cities with larger quota-induced reductions in immigration experienced a persistent decline in mortality rates, driven by a reduction in deaths from infectious diseases. The unfavourable living conditions immigrants endured explains the majority of the effect as quotas reduced residential crowding and mortality declines were largest in cities where immigrants resided in more crowded conditions and where public health resources were stretched thinnest.

Keywords: Immigration; Urban mortality; Nativism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Working Paper: How the Other Half Died: Immigration and Mortality in US Cities (2020)
Working Paper: How the Other Half Died: Immigration and Mortality in US Cities (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:restud:v:91:y:2024:i:1:p:1-44.

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