
Tommy Bengtsson
Professor

Fighting infectious disease: Evidence from Sweden 1870-1940
Författare
Summary, in English
Even more than in developing countries today, public health strategies to fight infectious disease in the past focused on the prevention of new infections by stopping their spread. These strategies were motivated by new insights into the causes of disease and the modes of transmission in the mid-nineteenth century. By combining longitudinal individual-level data on 17,000 children in a rural/semi-urban region in southern Sweden with local community data on public health investments, we explore the effects of the establishment of isolation hospitals and improved midwifery on mortality before age 15. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that the establishment of isolation hospitals in the mid-1890s was successful in reducing child mortality, while increases in the number of qualified midwives after the 1900s led to a decrease in infant mortality. In both cases, rates fell by more than 50 percent.
Avdelning/ar
- Centrum för ekonomisk demografi
- Ekonomisk-historiska institutionen
- EpiHealth: Epidemiology for Health
Publiceringsår
2016-04-08
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
27-52
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Population and Development Review
Volym
42
Issue
1
Länkar
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Wiley-Blackwell
Ämne
- Economic History
Aktiv
Published
Projekt
- Defeating Disease: Lasting Effects of Public Health and Medical Breakthroughs between 1880 and 1945 on Health and Income in Sweden
- Landskrona Population Study
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 1728-4457