Place-Based Drivers of Mortality: Evidence from Migration / Amy Finkelstein, Matthew Gentzkow, Heidi L. Williams.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Finkelstein, Amy.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Gentzkow, Matthew.

Williams, Heidi L.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25975.

NBER working paper series no. w25975

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Place-Based Drivers of Mortality

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2019.

Summary:

We estimate the effect of current location on elderly mortality by analyzing outcomes of movers in the Medicare population. We control for movers' origin locations as well as a rich vector of pre-move health measures. We also develop a novel strategy to adjust for remaining unobservables, based on the assumption that the relative importance of observables and unobservables correlated with movers' destinations is the same as the relative importance of those correlated with movers' origins. We estimate substantial effects of current location. Moving from a 10th to a 90th percentile location would increase life expectancy at age 65 by 1.1 years, and equalizing location effects would reduce cross-sectional variation in life expectancy by 15 percent. Places with favorable life expectancy effects tend to have higher quality and quantity of health care, less extreme climates, lower crime rates, and higher socioeconomic status

Notes:

Print version record

June 2019.