IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amerec/v64y2019i2p237-245.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Convergence of Mortality Among African Americans

Author

Listed:
  • Shahdad Naghshpour
  • Sediq Sameem

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore any possible convergence in African American mortality rates in the United States. Using county-level data of the United States over a period of nearly five decades (1968-2015), the findings indicate that β-convergence has occurred in mortality rates of African American population implying that their mortality rates are getting closer to their means. The results are particularly stronger for females and the elderly. The findings reflect lower cost of implementation and dissemination of strategies that would target the health of such population. JEL Classifications : II0, I30, R10

Suggested Citation

  • Shahdad Naghshpour & Sediq Sameem, 2019. "Convergence of Mortality Among African Americans," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 64(2), pages 237-245, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:64:y:2019:i:2:p:237-245
    DOI: 10.1177/0569434518812782
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0569434518812782
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0569434518812782?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Yazgan, M. Ege & Yilmazkuday, Hakan, 2011. "Price-level convergence: New evidence from U.S. cities," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 76-78, February.
    2. Raul A. Barreto & Anthony W. Hughes, 2004. "Under Performers and Over Achievers: A Quantile Regression Analysis of Growth," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 80(248), pages 17-35, March.
    3. Barro, Robert J & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 223-251, April.
      • Barro, R.J. & Sala-I-Martin, X., 1991. "Convergence," Papers 645, Yale - Economic Growth Center.
      • Barro, Robert J. & Sala-i-Martin, Xavier, 1992. "Convergence," Scholarly Articles 3451299, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    4. Goldberg, Pinelopi K. & Verboven, Frank, 2005. "Market integration and convergence to the Law of One Price: evidence from the European car market," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 49-73, January.
    5. Robert J. Barro, 1991. "Economic Growth in a Cross Section of Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(2), pages 407-443.
    6. Farbman, Michael, 1973. "Income Concentration in the Southern United States," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 55(3), pages 333-340, August.
    7. Christopher J. Ruhm, 2000. "Are Recessions Good for Your Health?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(2), pages 617-650.
    8. David C. Parsley & Shang-Jin Wei, 1996. "Convergence to the Law of One Price Without Trade Barriers or Currency Fluctuations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(4), pages 1211-1236.
    9. Robert J. Barro & Xavier Sala-i-Martin, 1991. "Convergence across States and Regions," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 22(1), pages 107-182.
    10. Carlino, Gerald A. & Mills, Leonard, 1996. "Testing neoclassical convergence in regional incomes and earnings," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 565-590, December.
    11. Enamorado, Ted & López-Calva, Luis F. & Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos, 2014. "Crime and growth convergence: Evidence from Mexico," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(1), pages 9-13.
    12. Xun Li & Rui Wang, 2016. "Are US obesity rates converging?," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(8), pages 539-543, May.
    13. A. Colin Cameron & Douglas L. Miller, 2015. "A Practitioner’s Guide to Cluster-Robust Inference," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 317-372.
    14. Sautter, J.M. & Thomas, P.A. & Dupre, M.E. & George, L.K., 2012. "Socioeconomic status and the black-white mortality crossover," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 102(8), pages 1566-1571.
    15. Cossman, J.S. & James, W.L. & Cosby, A.G. & Cossman, R.E., 2010. "Underlying causes of the emerging nonmetropolitan mortality penalty," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 100(8), pages 1417-1419.
    16. Michael R. Haines, 2001. "The Urban Mortality Transition in the United States, 1800-1940," NBER Historical Working Papers 0134, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Joshua A. Salomon & Christopher J. L. Murray, 2002. "The Epidemiologic Transition Revisited: Compositional Models for Causes of Death by Age and Sex," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 28(2), pages 205-228, June.
    18. Quah, D., 1990. "Galton'S Fallacy And The Tests Of The Convergence Hypothesis," Working papers 552, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
    19. Kankesu Jayanthakumaran & Shao-Wei Lee, 2013. "Evidence on the Convergence of Per Capita Income: A Comparison of Founder Members of the A ssociation of S outh E ast A sian N ations and the S outh A sian A ssociation of R egional C ooperation," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(1), pages 108-121, February.
    20. David Cutler & Grant Miller, 2005. "The role of public health improvements in health advances: The twentieth-century United States," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 42(1), pages 1-22, February.
    21. George D. Santopietro, 2002. "Analyzing Income Convergence at the County Level: The Case of Development in Central Appalachia," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(4), pages 893-906, December.
    22. Sameem, Sediq & Sylwester, Kevin, 2017. "The business cycle and mortality: Urban versus rural counties," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 28-35.
    23. Baumol, William J, 1986. "Productivity Growth, Convergence, and Welfare: What the Long-run Data Show," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 1072-1085, December.
    24. Ismail Genc & Jon Miller & Anil Rupasingha, 2011. "Stochastic convergence tests for US regional per capita personal income; some further evidence: a research note," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 46(2), pages 369-377, April.
    25. Duncan, Greg J. & Katz, Lawrence F. & Kessler, Ronald & Kling, Jeffrey R. & Gennetian, Lisa & Adam, Emma & Ludwig, Jens & Sanbonmatsu, Lisa & Tessler, Stacy & McDade, Thomas W. & Whitaker, Robert C., 2011. "Neighborhoods, Obesity and Diabetes –-- A Randomized Social Experiment," Scholarly Articles 8642951, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Christopoulos, Konstantinos & Eleftheriou, Konstantinos, 2020. "Premature mortality in the US: A convergence study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    2. Yazgan, M. Ege & Yilmazkuday, Hakan, 2011. "Price-level convergence: New evidence from U.S. cities," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 110(2), pages 76-78, February.

    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. Sameem, Sediq, 2020. "Are U.S. lung cancer mortality rates converging?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 190-197.
    2. Steve Cook, 2012. "β-convergence and the Cyclical Dynamics of UK Regional House Prices," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 49(1), pages 203-218, January.
    3. Pozzolo, Alberto Franco, 2004. "Endogenous Growth in Open Economies - A Survey of Major Results," Economics & Statistics Discussion Papers esdp04020, University of Molise, Department of Economics.
    4. Delgado Narro, Augusto Ricardo, 2020. "The Process of Convergence among the Japanese Prefectures: 1955 - 2012," MPRA Paper 100361, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Cunado, J. & Perez de Gracia, F., 2006. "Real convergence in Africa in the second-half of the 20th century," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 153-167.
    6. Alfredo Cartone & Paolo Postiglione, 2016. "Modelli spaziali di regressione quantilica per l?analisi della convergenza economica regionale," RIVISTA DI ECONOMIA E STATISTICA DEL TERRITORIO, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2016(3), pages 28-48.
    7. Andrew Hallett & Christian Richter, 2006. "Measuring the Degree of Convergence among European Business Cycles," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 27(2), pages 229-259, May.
    8. Julie Le Gallo, 2004. "Space-Time Analysis of GDP Disparities among European Regions: A Markov Chains Approach," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 27(2), pages 138-163, April.
    9. Julie Le Gallo & Sandy Dall'erba, 2008. "Spatial and sectoral productivity convergence between European regions, 1975–2000," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 87(4), pages 505-525, November.
    10. Cem Ertur & Julie Le Gallo & Catherine Baumont, 2006. "The European Regional Convergence Process, 1980-1995: Do Spatial Regimes and Spatial Dependence Matter?," International Regional Science Review, , vol. 29(1), pages 3-34, January.
    11. Bernard, Andrew B. & Durlauf, Steven N., 1996. "Interpreting tests of the convergence hypothesis," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1-2), pages 161-173.
    12. Ben-David, Dan, 1996. "Trade and convergence among countries," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-4), pages 279-298, May.
    13. Aparna Lolayekar & Pranab Mukhopadhyay, 2017. "Growth Convergence and Regional Inequality in India (1981–2012)," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 15(2), pages 307-328, June.
    14. Carlino, Gerald A. & Mills, Leonard, 1996. "Testing neoclassical convergence in regional incomes and earnings," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 565-590, December.
    15. Holmes, Mark J. & Otero, Jesús & Panagiotidis, Theodore, 2014. "A Note On The Extent Of U.S. Regional Income Convergence," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(7), pages 1635-1655, October.
    16. Wang, David Han-Min, 2007. "Convergence tests on tax burden and economic growth among China, Taiwan and the OECD countries," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 380(C), pages 278-286.
    17. Robert J. Barro, 2016. "Economic Growth and Convergence, Applied Especially to China," NBER Working Papers 21872, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Ezcurra, Roberto, 2007. "Is there cross-country convergence in carbon dioxide emissions?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 1363-1372, February.
    19. Evans, Paul & Karras, Georgios, 1996. "Convergence revisited," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 249-265, April.
    20. Domínguez, Alvaro & Santos-Marquez, Felipe & Mendez, Carlos, 2021. "Sectoral productivity convergence, input-output structure and network communities in Japan," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 582-599.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    convergence; mortality; African Americans; Blacks;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General
    • R10 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - General

    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:sae:amerec:v:64:y:2019:i:2:p:237-245. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/aex .

    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.