Legislating Longevity: State Public Health Laws and Mortality in the Early Twentieth Century / Martin H. Saavedra.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Saavedra, Martin H.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w35686.

NBER working paper series no. w35686

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2026.

Summary:

State legislatures enacted numerous public-health laws during the twentieth century, most of which likely had negligible effects on mortality. Using data on the universe of state-level public-health laws and regulations, I test whether these laws, taken together, account for a meaningful decline in mortality. To address endogeneity, I instrument for public-health legislation using the legislative calendar. Both OLS and IV estimates indicate that public-health laws reduced mortality, whereas other laws and repeals of public-health laws did not. Legislatures were most effective at reducing deaths from waterborne and drainage-related diseases, half as effective for airborne communicable diseases, and one-fifth as effective for noncommunicable diseases. I use text analysis to classify the laws into twenty topics and find that laws targeting particular causes of death produced larger mortality declines for those causes. The universe of public-health laws can account for approximately two-thirds of the mortality decline during the study period.

Notes:

August 2026.

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