Fetal Shock or Selection? The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Human Capital Development / Brian Beach, Joseph P. Ferrie, Martin H. Saavedra.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Beach, Brian.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ferrie, Joseph P.

Saavedra, Martin H.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w24725.

NBER working paper series no. w24725

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2018.

Summary:

Almond (2006) argues that in-utero exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic lowered socioeconomic status in adulthood, whereas subsequent work has argued that exposed cohorts may have been selected. We bring new evidence on the lasting impact of in-utero exposure to the pandemic. Linking census microdata to WWII enlistment records and city-level influenza data allows us to adopt an empirical approach that exploits pandemic intensity as a source of identifying variation. We show that pandemic intensity is less related to parental characteristics, suggesting this approach can more credibly be interpreted as causal. Our results indicate that in-utero exposure to the pandemic lowered high school graduation rates.

Notes:

Print version record

June 2018.