IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v111y2021i8p2697-2735.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Place-Based Drivers of Mortality: Evidence from Migration

Author

Listed:
  • Amy Finkelstein
  • Matthew Gentzkow
  • Heidi Williams

Abstract

We estimate the effect of current location on elderly mortality by analyzing outcomes of movers in the Medicare population. We control for movers' origin locations as well as a rich vector of pre-move health measures. We also develop a novel strategy to adjust for remaining unobservables, using the correlation of residual mortality with movers' origins to gauge the importance of omitted variables. We estimate substantial effects of current location. Moving from a tenth to a ninetieth percentile location would increase life expectancy at age 65 by 1.1 years, and equalizing location effects would reduce cross-sectional variation in life expectancy by 15 percent. Places with favorable life expectancy effects tend to have higher quality and quantity of health care, less extreme climates, lower crime rates, and higher socioeconomic status.

Suggested Citation

  • Amy Finkelstein & Matthew Gentzkow & Heidi Williams, 2021. "Place-Based Drivers of Mortality: Evidence from Migration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(8), pages 2697-2735, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:111:y:2021:i:8:p:2697-2735
    DOI: 10.1257/aer.20190825
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20190825
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/data/icpsr-unavailable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20190825.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20190825.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aer.20190825?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Victor R. Fuchs, 2011. "Who Shall Live?," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Who Shall Live? Health, Economics and Social Choice, chapter 3, pages 30-55, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. David Card & Jörg Heining & Patrick Kline, 2013. "Workplace Heterogeneity and the Rise of West German Wage Inequality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(3), pages 967-1015.
    3. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren, 2018. "The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility II: County-Level Estimates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(3), pages 1163-1228.
    4. Janet Currie & Hannes Schwandt, 2016. "Mortality Inequality: The Good News from a County-Level Approach," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(2), pages 29-52, Spring.
    5. Joseph G. Altonji & Todd E. Elder & Christopher R. Taber, 2005. "Selection on Observed and Unobserved Variables: Assessing the Effectiveness of Catholic Schools," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(1), pages 151-184, February.
    6. Bart J. Bronnenberg & Jean-Pierre H. Dube & Matthew Gentzkow, 2012. "The Evolution of Brand Preferences: Evidence from Consumer Migration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(6), pages 2472-2508, October.
    7. Joshua D. Angrist & Peter D. Hull & Parag A. Pathak & Christopher R. Walters, 2017. "Leveraging Lotteries for School Value-Added: Testing and Estimation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(2), pages 871-919.
    8. Raj Chetty & Nathaniel Hendren, 2018. "The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Intergenerational Mobility I: Childhood Exposure Effects," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(3), pages 1107-1162.
    9. Victor R Fuchs, 2011. "Who Shall Live?:Health, Economics and Social Choice," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 8167, February.
    10. Kevin M. Murphy & Robert H. Topel, 1990. "Efficiency Wages Reconsidered: Theory and Evidence," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Yoram Weiss & Gideon Fishelson (ed.), Advances in the Theory and Measurement of Unemployment, chapter 8, pages 204-240, Palgrave Macmillan.
    11. Skinner, Jonathan, 2011. "Causes and Consequences of Regional Variations in Health Care," Handbook of Health Economics, in: Mark V. Pauly & Thomas G. Mcguire & Pedro P. Barros (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 45-93, Elsevier.
    12. Tatyana Deryugina & David Molitor, 2020. "Does When You Die Depend on Where You Live? Evidence from Hurricane Katrina," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(11), pages 3602-3633, November.
    13. Amy Finkelstein & Matthew Gentzkow & Heidi Williams, 2016. "Sources of Geographic Variation in Health Care: Evidence From PatientMigration," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1681-1726.
    14. Grossman, Michael, 1972. "On the Concept of Health Capital and the Demand for Health," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 80(2), pages 223-255, March-Apr.
    15. Ludwig, Jens & Duncan, Greg J. & Katz, Lawrence F. & Kessler, Ronald & Kling, Jeffrey R. & Gennetian, Lisa A. & Sanbonmatsu, Lisa, 2012. "Neighborhood Effects on the Long-Term Well-Being of Low-Income Adults," Scholarly Articles 11870359, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    16. Joshua D. Angrist & Peter D. Hull & Parag A. Pathak & Christopher R. Walters, 2017. "Erratum to “Leveraging Lotteries for School Value-Added: Testing and Estimation”," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(4), pages 2061-2062.
    17. Mark V. Pauly & Thomas G. Mcguire & Pedro P. Barros (ed.), 2011. "Handbook of Health Economics," Handbook of Health Economics, Elsevier, volume 2, number 2.
    18. Joseph J. Doyle, 2011. "Returns to Local-Area Health Care Spending: Evidence from Health Shocks to Patients Far from Home," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 221-243, July.
    19. S. Olshansky & Bruce Carnes, 1997. "Ever since gompertz," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 34(1), pages 1-15, February.
    20. Christopher J L Murray & Sandeep C Kulkarni & Catherine Michaud & Niels Tomijima & Maria T Bulzacchelli & Terrell J Iandiorio & Majid Ezzati, 2006. "Eight Americas: Investigating Mortality Disparities across Races, Counties, and Race-Counties in the United States," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 3(9), pages 1-12, September.
    21. Goodarz Danaei & Eric L Ding & Dariush Mozaffarian & Ben Taylor & Jürgen Rehm & Christopher J L Murray & Majid Ezzati, 2009. "The Preventable Causes of Death in the United States: Comparative Risk Assessment of Dietary, Lifestyle, and Metabolic Risk Factors," PLOS Medicine, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(4), pages 1-23, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Godøy, Anna & Huitfeldt, Ingrid, 2020. "Regional variation in health care utilization and mortality," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    2. Hinnosaar, Marit & Liu, Elaine M., 2022. "Malleability of Alcohol Consumption: Evidence from Migrants," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    3. Michele Fioretti & Hongming Wang, 2020. "Performance Pay in Insurance Markets: Evidence from Medicare," Working Papers 2020.03, International Network for Economic Research - INFER.
    4. Tatyana Deryugina & David Molitor, 2020. "Does When You Die Depend on Where You Live? Evidence from Hurricane Katrina," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(11), pages 3602-3633, November.
    5. Peter Hull & Michal Kolesár & Christopher Walters, 2022. "Labor by design: contributions of David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 124(3), pages 603-645, July.
    6. Michele Fioretti & Hongming Wang, 2019. "Subsidizing Inequality: Performance Pay and Risk Selection in Medicare," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03393070, HAL.
    7. Alexander Ahammer & Thomas Schober, 2020. "Exploring variations in health‐care expenditures—What is the role of practice styles?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(6), pages 683-699, June.
    8. Nirav Mehta, 2019. "Measuring quality for use in incentive schemes: The case of “shrinkage” estimators," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(4), pages 1537-1577, November.
    9. David Card & Jesse Rothstein & Moises Yi, 2023. "Industry Wage Differentials: A Firm-Based Approach," NBER Working Papers 31588, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Ning Jia & Raven Molloy & Christopher Smith & Abigail Wozniak, 2023. "The Economics of Internal Migration: Advances and Policy Questions," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 144-180, March.
    11. Michael Bailey & Drew Johnston & Martin Koenen & Theresa Kuchler & Dominic Russel & Johannes Stroebel, 2022. "The Social Integration of International Migrants: Evidence from the Networks of Syrians in Germany," CESifo Working Paper Series 9680, CESifo.
    12. Valentin Verdier, 2020. "Estimation and Inference for Linear Models with Two-Way Fixed Effects and Sparsely Matched Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(1), pages 1-16, March.
    13. Simon Bensnes, 2021. "Time to spare and too much care. Congestion and overtreatment at the maternity ward," Discussion Papers 963, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    14. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4bg68glinb8r8roh0akvprtu9u is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Patrick Kline & Raffaele Saggio & Mikkel Sølvsten, 2020. "Leave‐Out Estimation of Variance Components," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(5), pages 1859-1898, September.
    16. Lleras-Muney, Adriana & Price, Joseph & Yue, Dahai, 2022. "The association between educational attainment and longevity using individual-level data from the 1940 census," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    17. Darrell J. Gaskin & Eric T. Roberts & Kitty S. Chan & Rachael McCleary & Christine Buttorff & Benjo A. Delarmente, 2019. "No Man is an Island: The Impact of Neighborhood Disadvantage on Mortality," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(7), pages 1-18, April.
    18. Heath Milsom, Luke, 2023. "Spatial inequality of opportunity in West Africa," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 225(C).
    19. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/4bg68glinb8r8roh0akvprtu9u is not listed on IDEAS
    20. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/2ioennpq5m90holakkatq7cmms is not listed on IDEAS
    21. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/2ioennpq5m90holakkatq7cmms is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Ivan Badinski & Amy Finkelstein & Matthew Gentzkow & Peter Hull, 2023. "Geographic Variation in Healthcare Utilization: The Role of Physicians," NBER Working Papers 31749, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    23. Marit Hinnosaar & Elaine M. Liu, 2020. "Persistence in alcohol consumption: evidence from migrants," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 620, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    24. Moura, Ana, 2021. "Essays in health economics," Other publications TiSEM c93abd22-fa4a-42a5-b172-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:111:y:2021:i:8:p:2697-2735. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.