Urbanization and Mortality Decline

We investigate the relationship between mortality decline and urbanization, which has hitherto been proposed by demographers but has yet to be tested. Using pooled-OLS, fixed effects first differences and long differences we find evidence for a robust negative correlation between crude death rates and urbanization. The use of Granger causality tests and instrumental variables suggest that this relationship is causal. Our preliminary results suggest that mortality decline causes urbanization through the creation of new cities rather than promoting urban growth in already-extant cities.