This paper examines the similarity in wealth between parents and their children, and explores alt... more This paper examines the similarity in wealth between parents and their children, and explores alternative explanations for this relationship. We find that the age-adjusted elasticity of child wealth with respect to parental wealth is 0.37, before the transfer of bequests. Lifetime income and ownership of particular assets, both of which exhibit strong intergeneration similarity, jointly explain nearly two-thirds of the wealth elasticity. Education, past parental transfers, and expected future bequests account for little of the remaining elasticity. Using new experimental evidence, we assess the importance of risk tolerance. The risk tolerance measures vary as theory would predict with the ownership of risky assets, and are highly correlated between parents and children. However, they explain little of the intergenerational correlation in the propensity to own different assets, suggesting that children's savings propensities are determined by mimicking their parents' behavior, or the inheritance of preferences not related to risk tolerance. Additionally, these risk tolerance measures explain only a small part of the remaining intergenerational wealth elasticity. .
Using data from a variety of sources, this paper comprehensively documents the dramatic changes i... more Using data from a variety of sources, this paper comprehensively documents the dramatic changes in the manufacturing sector and the large decline in employment rates and hours worked among prime-aged Americans since 2000. We use cross-region variation to explore the link between declining manufacturing employment and labor market outcomes. We find that manufacturing decline in a local area in the 2000s had large and persistent negative effects on local employment rates, hours worked and wages. We also show that declining local manufacturing employment is related to rising local opioid use and deaths. These results suggest that some of the recent opioid epidemic is driven by demand factors in addition to increased opioid supply. We conclude the paper with a discussion of potential mediating factors associated with declining manufacturing labor demand including public and private transfer receipt, sectoral switching, and inter-region mobility. Overall, we conclude that the decline in manufacturing employment was a substantial cause of the decline in employment rates during the 2000s particularly for less educated prime age workers. Given the trends in both capital and skill deepening within this sector, we further conclude that many policies currently being discussed to promote the manufacturing sector will have only a modest labor market impact for less educated individuals.
two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the 2001 ASSA meetings for comments and sugge... more two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the 2001 ASSA meetings for comments and suggestions. The views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
for helpful details about the mining sector. The views expressed herein are those of the authors ... more for helpful details about the mining sector. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
Using data recently collected by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that the intergenera... more Using data recently collected by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that the intergenerational correlation in expenditures is no larger than that in income, suggesting limited intra-family risk-sharing. On the other hand, even after controlling for the intergenerational correlation in income, the expenditures correlation remains significant. This suggests that other factors such as preferences, access to credit, and non-pecuniary inter vivos transfers potentially played a role in consumption smoothing across generations within a family. We also find that the correlation coefficients estimated using food and imputed total expenditures are smaller than that estimated using the measured total expenditures.
Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research pu... more Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
This paper demonstrates that administrative data may be inferior to survey data under particular ... more This paper demonstrates that administrative data may be inferior to survey data under particular circumstances. We examine the effect of state laws governing the minimum age of marriage in the United States. The estimated effects of these laws are much smaller when based on retrospective reports from census versus administrative records from Vital Statistics data. This discrepancy appears due to systematic avoidance behavior of two kinds. Some young people marry in states with less restrictive laws; others appear to have misrepresented their age on their marriage certificate. Our results have important implications regarding legal avoidance and the use of administrative data. (JEL J12 K36)
The long-term decline in U.S. workers' attempts to organize labor unions accelerated after 2000. ... more The long-term decline in U.S. workers' attempts to organize labor unions accelerated after 2000. We find that the swift rise of imports from China arising from a change in trade policy accounts for nearly all of this post-2000 acceleration: union certification elections decreased substantially among workers in manufacturing industries directly exposed to imports, but also among workers indirectly exposed through their local labor market. Consistent with a simple model of workers' decision to seek union representation, direct exposure lowered the expected wage gain from unionization, whereas indirect exposure increased the cost of job loss-both of which discourage organizing.
Exploiting variation across states and municipalities in the timing and details of midwifery laws... more Exploiting variation across states and municipalities in the timing and details of midwifery laws introduced during the period 1900-1940 and using data assembled from various primary sources, we find that requiring midwives to be licensed reduced maternal mortality by 7%-8% and may have led to modest reductions in infant mortality. These estimates represent the strongest evidence to date that licensing restrictions can improve the health of consumers and are directly relevant to ongoing policy debates on the merits of licensing midwives.
Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research pu... more Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
Data from the Health and Retirement Study indicate that hours constraints are a common feature of... more Data from the Health and Retirement Study indicate that hours constraints are a common feature of jobs held by workers nearing retirement. We present a simple model that predicts that workers who are not free to lower their usual hours of work should be more likely than their unconstrained counterparts to retire by some future date. Our estimates, which are robust to various specifications, support this prediction. The amount by which being hours constrained is estimated to raise retirement probabilities is nearly as large as the effect of being in relatively poor health, suggesting an economically significant effect. (JEL J26, J22, J14)
We study the extent to which the U.S. housing boom and subsequent housing bust during the 2000s m... more We study the extent to which the U.S. housing boom and subsequent housing bust during the 2000s masked (and then unmasked) the sharp, ongoing decline in the manufacturing sector. We exploit cross-city variation in manufacturing declines and housing booms and jointly estimate their effects on local employment and wages. Between 2000 and 2007, we find that a one standard deviation decrease in manufacturing labor demand reduces the share of non-college men employed by 0.9 percentage points, and a one standard deviation positive housing demand shock increases the employment share by roughly the same magnitude —enough to fully offset the adverse effects of declining manufacturing. We also find that housing booms significantly increase the likelihood that a displaced manufacturing worker finds employment, suggesting that at least some of our aggregate “masking” represents non-employment growth that would have occured earlier in the absence of the housing boom. Lastly, applying our estimates to the national labor market, we find that non-employment growth was reduced by roughly 30 percent between 2000 and 2007 due to the large, temporary increases in local housing prices, and we find that roughly 40 percent of the aggregate change in non-employment between 2000 and 2011 can be attributed to the decline in manufacturing. (JEL J21, E24, E32) 1E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]. We thank seminar participants at the Einaudi Institute, the NBER Summer Institute (Macro Perspectives), and the Chicago Federal Reserve Board for helpful comments. We are grateful to David Toniatti and Dan Zangri for excellent research assistance. We gratefully acknowledge the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for financial support. Hurst thanks the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia and Notowidigo thanks the Einaudi Institute for both their financial support and hospitality while working on this project.
ABSTRACT This paper argues that individuals are more likely to have social capital the greater th... more ABSTRACT This paper argues that individuals are more likely to have social capital the greater the incidence of people in their neighborhood who share certain traits which affect the ease and nature of social interaction. We argue that race and language are examples of such relational traits. The paper tests this prediction using an indicator of social capital never previously studied: whether someone uses a carpool to get to work. This measure retains nearly all of the strengths of previously used measures, and is free of most of their weaknesses. Analysis is conducted on a merged data set, with individual level data drawn from the 1990 IPUMS Census extract, and information on neighborhoods (PUMAs) derived from the 1990 Census STF3 tables. The model's predictions are confirmed for both race and language.
We examine the extent to which cross-market differences in women’s relative labor market outcomes... more We examine the extent to which cross-market differences in women’s relative labor market outcomes are determined by differences across markets in sexism ‐ defined as views about the appropriate role women should play in society. Using data from the GSS to measure sexism, we show that selection-corrected gender wage gaps and relative employment rates are significantly related to the degree of sexist views held by the median male, but not with male sexism at the 10th or 90th percentile. Consistent with a standard labor supply model in which sexism lowers women’s offered wage, we find lower relative employment of women in more sexist markets is concentrated among women who would have worked few hours in sexism’s absence. Finally, we show that the patterns described for male sexism are not apparent for female responses to the GSS questions. The results are robust to a variety of extensions, including alternative strategies for correcting for gender skill differences, and selection. We argue that these results are consistent with a taste-based model of discrimination (Becker (1957)), and are especially striking in light of results from Charles and Guryan (2008) who find that racial wage differences are related to the left tail of the racial prejudice distribution, rather than the median or right tail - exactly as the prejudice model predicts for a group whose prevalence in the labor market much less than that for women. The results suggest that sexism has important implications for the workings of labor markets for men and women.
Finance and economics discussion series, Aug 1, 2006
Beginning in 1999, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) added new questions about several ca... more Beginning in 1999, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) added new questions about several categories of consumption expenditure. The PSID now covers items that constitute more than seventy percent of total expenditure measured in the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE). We show that expenditure for each of the broad categories in the PSID aligns closely with corresponding measures from the CE. Using the new PSID data, we impute total expenditure in the PSID and show that this is also very close to total measured CE expenditure. For several distinct categories and for total consumption, we show that cross-sectional life cycle estimates of household expenditure activity are very similar across the two surveys. Finally, we illustrate the unique research value of the PSID for studying consumption by exploiting the survey's longitudinal design and genealogical structure to estimate the intergenerational elasticity of consumption expenditure, which is found to be in the range of 0.32-0.34.
We briefly review the evolution of empirical work on discrimination. We discuss why traditional r... more We briefly review the evolution of empirical work on discrimination. We discuss why traditional regression-based approaches neither convincingly measure market discrimination nor disentangle the relative importance of animus versus statistical discrimination in explaining such discrimination as exists. We describe the development of modern correspondence studies. We argue that these studies have the promise to credibly identify the presence of discrimination if not its magnitude, can inform us about the underlying mechanism generating discrimination and can also point to avenues for new theoretical and empirical work on discrimination. We discuss two articles with exemplary applications of these new methods.
Using data on 25 major American cities for the period 1900–1940, we explore the effects of munici... more Using data on 25 major American cities for the period 1900–1940, we explore the effects of municipal-level public health efforts that were viewed as critical in the fight against foodborne and waterborne diseases. In addition to studying interventions such as treating sewage and setting bacteriological standards for milk, which have received little attention, we provide new evidence on the effects of water filtration and chlorination, extending the work of previous scholars. Although water filtration is associated with an 11–12 percent reduction in infant mortality, none of the other interventions under study appear to have contributed to the observed mortality declines. (JEL H75, I12, I18, J13, Q18, Q51, Q53)
In the mid-19th century, the urban milk supply in the United States was regularly skimmed or dilu... more In the mid-19th century, the urban milk supply in the United States was regularly skimmed or diluted with water, reducing its nutritional value. At the urging of public health experts, cities across the country hired milk inspectors, who were tasked with collecting and analyzing milk samples with the goal of preventing adulteration and skimming. Using city-level data for the period 1880-1910, we explore the effects of milk inspections on infant mortality and mortality among children under the age of 5. Event-study estimates are small and statistically insignificant, providing little evidence of post-treatment reductions in either infant or child mortality.
This paper examines the similarity in wealth between parents and their children, and explores alt... more This paper examines the similarity in wealth between parents and their children, and explores alternative explanations for this relationship. We find that the age-adjusted elasticity of child wealth with respect to parental wealth is 0.37, before the transfer of bequests. Lifetime income and ownership of particular assets, both of which exhibit strong intergeneration similarity, jointly explain nearly two-thirds of the wealth elasticity. Education, past parental transfers, and expected future bequests account for little of the remaining elasticity. Using new experimental evidence, we assess the importance of risk tolerance. The risk tolerance measures vary as theory would predict with the ownership of risky assets, and are highly correlated between parents and children. However, they explain little of the intergenerational correlation in the propensity to own different assets, suggesting that children's savings propensities are determined by mimicking their parents' behavior, or the inheritance of preferences not related to risk tolerance. Additionally, these risk tolerance measures explain only a small part of the remaining intergenerational wealth elasticity. .
Using data from a variety of sources, this paper comprehensively documents the dramatic changes i... more Using data from a variety of sources, this paper comprehensively documents the dramatic changes in the manufacturing sector and the large decline in employment rates and hours worked among prime-aged Americans since 2000. We use cross-region variation to explore the link between declining manufacturing employment and labor market outcomes. We find that manufacturing decline in a local area in the 2000s had large and persistent negative effects on local employment rates, hours worked and wages. We also show that declining local manufacturing employment is related to rising local opioid use and deaths. These results suggest that some of the recent opioid epidemic is driven by demand factors in addition to increased opioid supply. We conclude the paper with a discussion of potential mediating factors associated with declining manufacturing labor demand including public and private transfer receipt, sectoral switching, and inter-region mobility. Overall, we conclude that the decline in manufacturing employment was a substantial cause of the decline in employment rates during the 2000s particularly for less educated prime age workers. Given the trends in both capital and skill deepening within this sector, we further conclude that many policies currently being discussed to promote the manufacturing sector will have only a modest labor market impact for less educated individuals.
two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the 2001 ASSA meetings for comments and sugge... more two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at the 2001 ASSA meetings for comments and suggestions. The views expressed herein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
for helpful details about the mining sector. The views expressed herein are those of the authors ... more for helpful details about the mining sector. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.
Using data recently collected by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that the intergenera... more Using data recently collected by the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that the intergenerational correlation in expenditures is no larger than that in income, suggesting limited intra-family risk-sharing. On the other hand, even after controlling for the intergenerational correlation in income, the expenditures correlation remains significant. This suggests that other factors such as preferences, access to credit, and non-pecuniary inter vivos transfers potentially played a role in consumption smoothing across generations within a family. We also find that the correlation coefficients estimated using food and imputed total expenditures are smaller than that estimated using the measured total expenditures.
Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research pu... more Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
This paper demonstrates that administrative data may be inferior to survey data under particular ... more This paper demonstrates that administrative data may be inferior to survey data under particular circumstances. We examine the effect of state laws governing the minimum age of marriage in the United States. The estimated effects of these laws are much smaller when based on retrospective reports from census versus administrative records from Vital Statistics data. This discrepancy appears due to systematic avoidance behavior of two kinds. Some young people marry in states with less restrictive laws; others appear to have misrepresented their age on their marriage certificate. Our results have important implications regarding legal avoidance and the use of administrative data. (JEL J12 K36)
The long-term decline in U.S. workers' attempts to organize labor unions accelerated after 2000. ... more The long-term decline in U.S. workers' attempts to organize labor unions accelerated after 2000. We find that the swift rise of imports from China arising from a change in trade policy accounts for nearly all of this post-2000 acceleration: union certification elections decreased substantially among workers in manufacturing industries directly exposed to imports, but also among workers indirectly exposed through their local labor market. Consistent with a simple model of workers' decision to seek union representation, direct exposure lowered the expected wage gain from unionization, whereas indirect exposure increased the cost of job loss-both of which discourage organizing.
Exploiting variation across states and municipalities in the timing and details of midwifery laws... more Exploiting variation across states and municipalities in the timing and details of midwifery laws introduced during the period 1900-1940 and using data assembled from various primary sources, we find that requiring midwives to be licensed reduced maternal mortality by 7%-8% and may have led to modest reductions in infant mortality. These estimates represent the strongest evidence to date that licensing restrictions can improve the health of consumers and are directly relevant to ongoing policy debates on the merits of licensing midwives.
Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research pu... more Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.
Data from the Health and Retirement Study indicate that hours constraints are a common feature of... more Data from the Health and Retirement Study indicate that hours constraints are a common feature of jobs held by workers nearing retirement. We present a simple model that predicts that workers who are not free to lower their usual hours of work should be more likely than their unconstrained counterparts to retire by some future date. Our estimates, which are robust to various specifications, support this prediction. The amount by which being hours constrained is estimated to raise retirement probabilities is nearly as large as the effect of being in relatively poor health, suggesting an economically significant effect. (JEL J26, J22, J14)
We study the extent to which the U.S. housing boom and subsequent housing bust during the 2000s m... more We study the extent to which the U.S. housing boom and subsequent housing bust during the 2000s masked (and then unmasked) the sharp, ongoing decline in the manufacturing sector. We exploit cross-city variation in manufacturing declines and housing booms and jointly estimate their effects on local employment and wages. Between 2000 and 2007, we find that a one standard deviation decrease in manufacturing labor demand reduces the share of non-college men employed by 0.9 percentage points, and a one standard deviation positive housing demand shock increases the employment share by roughly the same magnitude —enough to fully offset the adverse effects of declining manufacturing. We also find that housing booms significantly increase the likelihood that a displaced manufacturing worker finds employment, suggesting that at least some of our aggregate “masking” represents non-employment growth that would have occured earlier in the absence of the housing boom. Lastly, applying our estimates to the national labor market, we find that non-employment growth was reduced by roughly 30 percent between 2000 and 2007 due to the large, temporary increases in local housing prices, and we find that roughly 40 percent of the aggregate change in non-employment between 2000 and 2011 can be attributed to the decline in manufacturing. (JEL J21, E24, E32) 1E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]. We thank seminar participants at the Einaudi Institute, the NBER Summer Institute (Macro Perspectives), and the Chicago Federal Reserve Board for helpful comments. We are grateful to David Toniatti and Dan Zangri for excellent research assistance. We gratefully acknowledge the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for financial support. Hurst thanks the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia and Notowidigo thanks the Einaudi Institute for both their financial support and hospitality while working on this project.
ABSTRACT This paper argues that individuals are more likely to have social capital the greater th... more ABSTRACT This paper argues that individuals are more likely to have social capital the greater the incidence of people in their neighborhood who share certain traits which affect the ease and nature of social interaction. We argue that race and language are examples of such relational traits. The paper tests this prediction using an indicator of social capital never previously studied: whether someone uses a carpool to get to work. This measure retains nearly all of the strengths of previously used measures, and is free of most of their weaknesses. Analysis is conducted on a merged data set, with individual level data drawn from the 1990 IPUMS Census extract, and information on neighborhoods (PUMAs) derived from the 1990 Census STF3 tables. The model's predictions are confirmed for both race and language.
We examine the extent to which cross-market differences in women’s relative labor market outcomes... more We examine the extent to which cross-market differences in women’s relative labor market outcomes are determined by differences across markets in sexism ‐ defined as views about the appropriate role women should play in society. Using data from the GSS to measure sexism, we show that selection-corrected gender wage gaps and relative employment rates are significantly related to the degree of sexist views held by the median male, but not with male sexism at the 10th or 90th percentile. Consistent with a standard labor supply model in which sexism lowers women’s offered wage, we find lower relative employment of women in more sexist markets is concentrated among women who would have worked few hours in sexism’s absence. Finally, we show that the patterns described for male sexism are not apparent for female responses to the GSS questions. The results are robust to a variety of extensions, including alternative strategies for correcting for gender skill differences, and selection. We argue that these results are consistent with a taste-based model of discrimination (Becker (1957)), and are especially striking in light of results from Charles and Guryan (2008) who find that racial wage differences are related to the left tail of the racial prejudice distribution, rather than the median or right tail - exactly as the prejudice model predicts for a group whose prevalence in the labor market much less than that for women. The results suggest that sexism has important implications for the workings of labor markets for men and women.
Finance and economics discussion series, Aug 1, 2006
Beginning in 1999, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) added new questions about several ca... more Beginning in 1999, the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) added new questions about several categories of consumption expenditure. The PSID now covers items that constitute more than seventy percent of total expenditure measured in the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE). We show that expenditure for each of the broad categories in the PSID aligns closely with corresponding measures from the CE. Using the new PSID data, we impute total expenditure in the PSID and show that this is also very close to total measured CE expenditure. For several distinct categories and for total consumption, we show that cross-sectional life cycle estimates of household expenditure activity are very similar across the two surveys. Finally, we illustrate the unique research value of the PSID for studying consumption by exploiting the survey's longitudinal design and genealogical structure to estimate the intergenerational elasticity of consumption expenditure, which is found to be in the range of 0.32-0.34.
We briefly review the evolution of empirical work on discrimination. We discuss why traditional r... more We briefly review the evolution of empirical work on discrimination. We discuss why traditional regression-based approaches neither convincingly measure market discrimination nor disentangle the relative importance of animus versus statistical discrimination in explaining such discrimination as exists. We describe the development of modern correspondence studies. We argue that these studies have the promise to credibly identify the presence of discrimination if not its magnitude, can inform us about the underlying mechanism generating discrimination and can also point to avenues for new theoretical and empirical work on discrimination. We discuss two articles with exemplary applications of these new methods.
Using data on 25 major American cities for the period 1900–1940, we explore the effects of munici... more Using data on 25 major American cities for the period 1900–1940, we explore the effects of municipal-level public health efforts that were viewed as critical in the fight against foodborne and waterborne diseases. In addition to studying interventions such as treating sewage and setting bacteriological standards for milk, which have received little attention, we provide new evidence on the effects of water filtration and chlorination, extending the work of previous scholars. Although water filtration is associated with an 11–12 percent reduction in infant mortality, none of the other interventions under study appear to have contributed to the observed mortality declines. (JEL H75, I12, I18, J13, Q18, Q51, Q53)
In the mid-19th century, the urban milk supply in the United States was regularly skimmed or dilu... more In the mid-19th century, the urban milk supply in the United States was regularly skimmed or diluted with water, reducing its nutritional value. At the urging of public health experts, cities across the country hired milk inspectors, who were tasked with collecting and analyzing milk samples with the goal of preventing adulteration and skimming. Using city-level data for the period 1880-1910, we explore the effects of milk inspections on infant mortality and mortality among children under the age of 5. Event-study estimates are small and statistically insignificant, providing little evidence of post-treatment reductions in either infant or child mortality.
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Papers by Kerwin Charles