We examine how the introduction of smallpox vaccination affected early-life mortality and fertility in Sweden during the first half of the 19th century. We demonstrate that parishes in counties with higher levels of smallpox mortality prior to the introduction of vaccination experienced a...

This Working Document provides an estimate of China’s impact on the growth rate of resource-rich countries since its WTO accession in December 2001. The authors’ empirical approach follows the logic of the differences-in-differences estimator. In addition to temporal variation arising from...

In this study we investigate the causal impact of increasing adult longevity on higher education. We exploit the fourth stage of the epidemiological transition, i.e. the unexpected decline of deaths from heart attack and stroke in the 1970s as a large positive health shock that affected...

We examine the effect of increased demand for social insurance on church membership.Our empirical strategy exploits the differential impact of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 across counties to identify a shock to the demand for social insurance. We find that flooded counties experienced a...

The influence of life expectancy on schooling is usually thought of as one main mechanism by which life expectancy possibly affects income per capita and thus economic development. However, the relevance of this channel has been qualified in recent research. This paper studies whether life...

This study documents that the growth in life expectancy over the 20th century decreased per capita GDP growth and increased population growth. By exploiting significant advances in medical technologies, starting to diffuse in the 1940s, the analysis establishes that countries with higher levels...

Previous research establishes that the rise in life expectancy during the second half of the twentieth century led to larger, but not wealthier, populations. In terms of the neoclassical growth theory, these findings indicate that the potential positive effects of health on human capital and...

Exploiting cross-state variation in infectious causes of death, along with time variation arising from medical innovations toward the middle of the twentieth century, this study examines the consequences of a positive health shock in the US. It establishes that states with higher levels of...

Exploiting preintervention variation in mortality from various infectious diseases, together with the time variation arising from medical breakthroughs in the late 1940s and the 1950s, this study examines how a large positive shock to life expectancy influenced the formation of human capital...

Schooling. This study estimates the respective contributions of schooling and income in determining the fertility transition within the US states between 1840 and 1980. While evidence suggests that both relationships are negative and statistically signi?cant, the most robust determinant of the...