Pollution, Infectious Disease, and Mortality: Evidence from the 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic
Top Cited Papers
Open Access
- 2 October 2018
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in The Journal of Economic History
- Vol. 78 (4), 1179-1209
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s002205071800058x
Abstract
The 1918 Influenza Pandemic killed millions worldwide and hundreds of thousands in the United States. This article studies the impact of air pollution on pandemic mortality. The analysis combines a panel dataset on infant and all-age mortality with a novel measure of air pollution based on the burning of coal in a large sample of U.S. cities. We estimate that air pollution contributed significantly to pandemic mortality. Cities that used more coal experienced tens of thousands of excess deaths in 1918 relative to cities that used less coal with similar pre-pandemic socioeconomic conditions and baseline health. Factors related to poverty, public health, and the timing of onset also affected pandemic mortality. The findings support recent medical evidence on the link between air pollution and influenza infection, and suggest that poor air quality was an important cause of mortality during the pandemic.Keywords
This publication has 29 references indexed in Scilit:
- The effect of public health measures on the 1918 influenza pandemic in U.S. citiesProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2007
- Air Pollution and Respiratory Viral InfectionInhalation Toxicology, 2007
- Is the 1918 Influenza Pandemic Over? Long‐Term Effects of In Utero Influenza Exposure in the Post‐1940 U.S. PopulationJournal of Political Economy, 2006
- 1918 Influenza: the Mother of All PandemicsEmerging Infectious Diseases, 2006
- Diesel Exhaust Enhances Influenza Virus Infections in Respiratory Epithelial CellsToxicological Sciences, 2005
- The Impact of Air Pollution on Infant Mortality: Evidence from Geographic Variation in Pollution Shocks Induced by a RecessionThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2003
- Using CALPUFF to evaluate the impacts of power plant emissions in Illinois: model sensitivity and implicationsAtmospheric Environment, 2002
- America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918Journal of Public Health Policy, 1991
- Age and Sex Incidence of Influenza and Pneumonia Morbidity and Mortality in the Epidemic of 1928-29 with Comparative Data for the Epidemic of 1918-19: Based on Surveys of Families in Certain Localities in the United States following the EpidemicsPublic Health Reports (1896-1970), 1931
- Preliminary Statistics of the Influenza EpidemicPublic Health Reports (1896-1970), 1918