Bismarck's Health Insurance and the Mortality Decline

Stefan Bauernschuster, Anastasia Driva and Erik Hornung

No 6601, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We study the impact of social health insurance on mortality. Using the introduction of compulsory health insurance in the German Empire in 1884 as a natural experiment, we estimate flexible difference-in-differences models exploiting variation in eligibility for insurance across occupations. Our findings suggest that Bismarck’s health insurance generated a significant mortality reduction. Despite the absence of antibiotics and most vaccines, we find the results to be largely driven by a decline of deaths from infectious diseases. We present evidence suggesting that the decline is associated with access to health services but not sick pay. This finding may be explained by insurance fund physicians transmitting new knowledge on infectious disease prevention.

Keywords: health insurance; mortality; demographic transition; Prussia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I13 I18 J11 N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea, nep-his and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Bismarck’s Health Insurance and the Mortality Decline (2020)
Working Paper: Bismarck's Health Insurance and the Mortality Decline (2018)
Working Paper: Bismarck's Health Insurance and the Mortality Decline (2017)
Working Paper: Bismarck's Health Insurance and the Mortality Decline (2017)
Working Paper: Bismarck’s Health Insurance and the Mortality Decline (2016)
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