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Pandemics Change Cities: Municipal Spending and Voter Extremism in Germany, 1918-1933

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Abstract

We merge several historical data sets from Germany to show that influenza mortality in 1918-1920 is correlated with societal changes, as measured by municipal spending and city-level extremist voting, in the subsequent decade. First, influenza deaths are associated with lower per capita spending, especially on services consumed by the young. Second, influenza deaths are correlated with the share of votes received by extremist parties in 1932 and 1933. Our election results are robust to controlling for city spending, demographics, war-related population changes, city-level wages, and regional unemployment, and to instrumenting influenza mortality. We conjecture that our findings may be the consequence of long-term societal changes brought about by a pandemic.

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  • Kristian S. Blickle, 2020. "Pandemics Change Cities: Municipal Spending and Voter Extremism in Germany, 1918-1933," Staff Reports 921, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fednsr:87888
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    Cited by:

    1. Mitchener, Kris & Esteves, Rui & Nencka, Peter & Thomasson, Melissa, 2022. "Do Pandemics Change Healthcare? Evidence from the Great Influenza," CEPR Discussion Papers 17666, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Mona Foertsch & Felix Roesel, 2023. "Public Infrastructure and Regional Resilience: Evidence from the 1918 Spanish Flu in Germany," CESifo Working Paper Series 10705, CESifo.
    3. Brian Beach & Karen Clay & Martin Saavedra, 2022. "The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Its Lessons for COVID-19," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 60(1), pages 41-84, March.
    4. Obstfeld, Maurice & Clavin, Patricia & Corsetti, Giancarlo & Tooze, Adam, 2021. "Lessons of Keynes’s Economic Consequences in a Turbulent Century," CEPR Discussion Papers 16610, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Carolina Arteaga & Victoria Barone, 2023. "Democracy and The Opioid Epidemic," Working Papers tecipa-765, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    6. Gianmarco Daniele & Andrea F.M. Martinangeli & Francesco Passarelli & Willem Sas & Lisa Windsteiger, 2020. "Wind of Change? Experimental Survey Evidence on the Covid-19 Shock and Socio-Political Attitudes in Europe," CESifo Working Paper Series 8517, CESifo.
    7. Howard Bodenhorn, 2020. "Business in a Time of Spanish Influenza," NBER Working Papers 27495, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Gregori Galofre-Vila & Maria Gomez-Leon & David Stuckler, 2021. "A Lesson from History? The 1918 Inuenza pandemic and the rise of Italian Fascism: A cross-city quantitative and historical text qualitative analysis," Documentos de Trabajo - Lan Gaiak Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra 2102, Departamento de Economía - Universidad Pública de Navarra.
    9. Alexi Gugushvili & Jonathan Koltai & David Stuckler & Martin McKee, 2020. "Votes, populism, and pandemics," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 65(6), pages 721-722, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    influenza; pandemic; municipal spending; voter extremism; COVID-19;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H3 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents
    • H4 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • N14 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: 1913-

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