The New Poor Law and the health of the population of England and Wales 1834-1860

David Green, Gabriel Geisler Mesevage, Graham Mooney and Simon Szreter

No 18505, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We estimate the impact of reductions in poor law expenditure following the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act on rural life expectancy and mortality rates. We find that a 10 per cent decrease in poor law expenditure is associated with roughly a 1.5–2.0 per cent increase in early childhood mortality (ECMR). Our estimates imply 8–10 per cent increases in ECMR and 2–4 per cent falls in rural expectation of life at birth as a result of the spending cuts imposed by the Poor Law Amendment Act. These results help to explain the weak performance of mid-nineteenth century life expectancy measures during a period of rising real wages but falling welfare expenditure.

Keywords: Public health; Government social and health spending; Uk economic history (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I18 I38 N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP18505 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

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:cpr:ceprdp:18505

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP18505

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().