How the Other Half Died: Immigration and Mortality in US Cities

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ager, Philipp; Feigenbaum, James J.; Hansen, Casper W.; Tan, Hui Ren
• 署名单位: University of Mannheim; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Boston University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Copenhagen; National University of Singapore
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdad035
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 1-44
• 关键词: large american-cities; UNITED-STATES; self-selection; race stocks; HEALTH; disease; AGE; MIGRANTS; death; DISCRIMINATION

摘要

Fears of immigrants as a threat to public health have a long and sordid history. At the turn of the 20th century, when immigrants made up one-third of the population in crowded American cities, contemporaries blamed high urban mortality rates on the newest arrivals. We evaluate how the implementation of country-specific immigration quotas in the 1920s affected urban health. Cities with larger quota-induced reductions in immigration experienced a persistent decline in mortality rates, driven by a reduction in deaths from infectious diseases. The unfavourable living conditions immigrants endured explains the majority of the effect as quotas reduced residential crowding and mortality declines were largest in cities where immigrants resided in more crowded conditions and where public health resources were stretched thinnest.