Preventing the White Death: Tuberculosis Dispensaries
Publikation: Working paper › Forskning
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Preventing the White Death : Tuberculosis Dispensaries. / Hansen, Casper Worm; Jensen, Peter S.; Madsen, Peter.
2017.Publikation: Working paper › Forskning
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TY - UNPB
T1 - Preventing the White Death
T2 - Tuberculosis Dispensaries
AU - Hansen, Casper Worm
AU - Jensen, Peter S.
AU - Madsen, Peter
PY - 2017/9/18
Y1 - 2017/9/18
N2 - Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading cause of death worldwide and, while treatable by antibiotics since the 1940s, drug resistant strains have emerged. This paper estimates the effects of the establishment of a pre-antibiotic era public health institution, known as a TB dispensary, designed to prevent the spread of the disease. Our annual difference-in-differences estimation reveals that the rollout of the dispensaries across Danish cities led to a 19 percent decline in the TB mortality rate, but exhibits no significant impacts on other diseases in placebo regressions. We next take advantage of the dispensaries' explicit targeting on TB to set up a triple-differences model which exploits other diseases as controls and obtain a similar magnitude of the effect. Using monthly mortality data in a similar strategy leads to the same conclusion. In addition, we find small positive spillover effects of the dispensaries on productivity as measured by annual income per taxpayer at the city level, digitized from historical tax-assessment records. Overall, the evidence highlights the provision of personalized information on infectious diseases as a cost-effective cause of the historical mortality decline.
AB - Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading cause of death worldwide and, while treatable by antibiotics since the 1940s, drug resistant strains have emerged. This paper estimates the effects of the establishment of a pre-antibiotic era public health institution, known as a TB dispensary, designed to prevent the spread of the disease. Our annual difference-in-differences estimation reveals that the rollout of the dispensaries across Danish cities led to a 19 percent decline in the TB mortality rate, but exhibits no significant impacts on other diseases in placebo regressions. We next take advantage of the dispensaries' explicit targeting on TB to set up a triple-differences model which exploits other diseases as controls and obtain a similar magnitude of the effect. Using monthly mortality data in a similar strategy leads to the same conclusion. In addition, we find small positive spillover effects of the dispensaries on productivity as measured by annual income per taxpayer at the city level, digitized from historical tax-assessment records. Overall, the evidence highlights the provision of personalized information on infectious diseases as a cost-effective cause of the historical mortality decline.
KW - Faculty of Social Sciences
KW - Tuberculosis
KW - mortality
KW - disease prevention
KW - information
KW - rollout
KW - productivity
KW - D62
KW - H23
KW - I15
KW - I18
KW - N34
M3 - Working paper
T3 - University of Copenhagen. Institute of Economics. Discussion Papers (Online)
BT - Preventing the White Death
ER -
ID: 189361496