Typhoid Fever, Water Quality, and Human Capital Formation

Joseph P. Ferrie · Martin Hugo Saavedra · Werner Troesken

137 citations0/0 files storedThe Journal of Economic History

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Historical Economic and Social Studies Economic Growth and Productivity Water management and technologies

Abstract

New water purification technologies led to large mortality declines by helping eliminate typhoid fever and other waterborne diseases. We examine how this affected human capital formation using early-life typhoid fatality rates to proxy for water quality. We merge city-level data to individuals linked between the 1900 and 1940 Censuses. Eliminating early-life exposure to typhoid fever increased later-life earnings by one percent and educational attainment by one month. Instrumenting for typhoid fever using typhoid rates from cities that lie upstream produces results nine times larger. The increase in earnings from eliminating typhoid fever more than offset the cost of elimination.

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2011Human capital development before age five 2005The role of public health improvements in health advances: The twentieth-century United States 1963A history of interest rates 1978A History of Interest Rates.2010Human Capital Development Before Age Five 2009Adult Height and Childhood Disease 2000Understanding the twentieth-century decline in chronic conditions among older men 2007Water and Chicago’s mortality transition, 1850–1925

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