Typhoid Fever, Water Quality, and Human Capital Formation

2016/02/25 by Brian Beach, Joseph Ferrie, Joseph P. Ferrie +3 · 6 citations
Engineering · Nursing · Social Sciences · #Child Nutrition and Water Access #Hydropower, Displacement, Environmental Impact #Water resources management and optimization

paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0022050716000413

openalex publication_date 2016/02/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

New water purification technologies led to large mortality declines by helping eliminate typhoid fever and other waterborne diseases. We examine how this affected human capital formation using early-life typhoid fatality rates to proxy for water quality. We merge city-level data to individuals linked between the 1900 and 1940 Censuses. Eliminating early-life exposure to typhoid fever increased later-life earnings by one percent and educational attainment by one month. Instrumenting for typhoid fever using typhoid rates from cities that lie upstream produces results nine times larger. The increase in earnings from eliminating typhoid fever more than offset the cost of elimination.

Cited by

• Racial Inequality in the Prime of Life: Infectious Disease Mortality in U.S. Cities, 1906–1933
• Long-Run Consequences of Exposure to Natural Disasters
• Chain effects of clean water: The Mills-Reincke phenomenon in early twentieth-century Japan
• Coal Smoke and Mortality in an Early Industrial Economy
• Bismarck's Health Insurance and the Mortality Decline
• Fetal Shock or Selection? The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Human Capital Development

Related

• Chain effects of clean water: The Mills-Reincke phenomenon in early twentieth-century Japan
• Can’t Boil, Won’t Boil: Material Inequality, Information, and Disease Avoidance during a Typhoid Epidemic in Tampere, Finland, in 1916
• Water Purification Efforts and the Black-White Infant Mortality Gap, 1906-1938
• Racial Inequality in the Prime of Life: Infectious Disease Mortality in U.S. Cities, 1906–1933
• Fetal Shock or Selection? The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Human Capital Development