Work

Place-Based Drivers of Mortality: Evidence from Migration

Year: 2019

Type: report

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, based on the assumption that the relative importance of observables and unobservables correlated with movers' destinations is the same as the relative importance of those correlated with movers' origins.We estimate substantial effects of current location.Moving from a 10th to a 90th 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

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

DOI: 10.3386/w25975

Authors: Amy Finkelstein, Matthew Gentzkow, Heidi Williams

Institutions: National Bureau of Economic Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University

Language: English

Topic: Health disparities and outcomes

Subfield: Health

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Good health and well-being, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: green

Funders: National Science Foundation, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, National Institute on Aging