Aging and Death under a Dollar a Day / Abhijit V. Banerjee, Esther Duflo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Banerjee, Abhijit V.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Duflo, Esther.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w13683.

NBER working paper series no. w13683

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2007.

Summary:

This paper uses household survey data form several developing countries to investigate whether the poor (defined as those living under $1 or $2 dollars a day at PPP) and the non poor have different mortality rates in old age. We construct a proxy measure of longevity, which is the probability that an adult's mother and father are alive. The non-poor's mothers are more likely to be alive than the poor's mothers. Using panel data set for Indonesia and Vietnam, we also find that older adults are significantly more likely to have died five years later if they are poor. The direction of causality is unclear: the poor may be poor because they are sick (and thus more likely to die), or they could die because they are poor.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2007.