Northwestern Events Calendar

Oct
16
2024

Seminar in Economic History

When: Wednesday, October 16, 2024
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM CT

Where: Kellogg Global Hub, 2130, 2211 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208 map it

Audience: Faculty/Staff - Student - Post Docs/Docs - Graduate Students

Contact: Mariya Acherkan  

Group: Department of Economics: Seminar in Economic History

Category: Academic

Description:

Jesse McDevitt Irwin (Northwestern): Health Disparities in the US, 1870-1950: New Evidence from Childhood Sex Ratios

Abstract: Basic facts about infant mortality and population health in US history remain to be established due to the lack of birth and death records. I introduce a novel indicator of infant mortality and population health, available from census data: childhood sex ratios. Assembling vital statistics data from contemporary Europe and the 20th-century US, I verify the empirical relationship between sex ratios and infant mortality. I analyze sex ratios by race, nativity, and residence for the period from 1870 to 1950, using IPUMS full count data. I find that population health deteriorated across the second half of the 19th century, with large health disparities based on race, nativity, and residence. Population health improved after 1900, largely driven by declines in urban mortality. Because immigrants were concentrated in cities and the Black population in the rural South, this 20th-century improvement reduced inequality between native-born and foreign-born whites but increased racial health disparities.

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