Infant mortality and the health of survivors: Britain, 1910-50

Timothy Hatton

No 10020, Working Papers from Economic History Society

Abstract: "The early decades of the twentieth century witnessed an intense debate over the key influences on the health of children and their subsequent fitness as adults. Most of the experts argued that an unfavourable disease environment led to high infant mortality and impaired health during childhood. A few suggested that the selection effect of infant mortality should have led to healthier survivors. Thus infant mortality could be related positively to subsequent health through a selection effect and negatively through a scarring effect. I examine these effects using town-level panel data on the heights of school children reported by school medical inspectors from 1910 to 1950. Econometric estimates provide no evidence for the selection effect but some support for the scarring effect. The results suggest that the improvement in the disease environment, as reflected by the decline in infant mortality, accounted for a quarter of the increase in average heights in the first half of the twentieth century."

JEL-codes: N00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/bb32eb58-6823-4982-9bd5-6364cad63636.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/bb32eb58-6823-4982-9bd5-6364cad63636.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/bb32eb58-6823-4982-9bd5-6364cad63636.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Infant mortality and the health of survivors: Britain, 1910–50 (2011)
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:ehs:wpaper:10020

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Economic History Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chair Public Engagement Committe (currently David Higgins - Newcastle) ().