This study evaluates the economic consequences of the successful eradication of hookworm disease from the American South. The hookworm-eradication campaign (c. 1910) began soon after (i) the discovery that a variety of health problems among Southerners could be attributed to the disease and (ii) the donation by John D. Rockefeller of a substantial sum to the effort. The Rockefeller Sanitary Commission (RSC) surveyed infection rates in the affected areas (eleven southern states) and found that an average of forty percent of school-aged children were infected with hookworm. The RSC then sponsored treatment and education campaigns across the region. Follow-up studies indicate that this campaign substantially reduced hookworm disease almost immediately. The sudden introduction of this treatment combines with the cross-area differences in pre-treatment infection rates to form the basis of the identification strategy. Areas with higher levels of hookworm infection prior to the RSC experienced greater increases in school enrollment, attendance, and literacy after the intervention. This result is robust to controlling for a variety of alternative factors, including differential trends across areas, changing crop prices, shifts in certain educational and health policies, and the effect of malaria eradication. No significant contemporaneous results are found for adults, who should have benefited less from the intervention owing to their substantially lower (prior) infection rates. A long-term follow-up of affected cohorts indicates a substantial gain in income that coincided with exposure to hookworm eradication. I also find evidence that eradication increased the return to schooling.
Research on the effect of language skills on earnings is complicated by the endogeneity of language skills. This study exploits the phenomenon that younger children learn languages more easily than older children to construct an instrumental variable for language proficiency. We find a significant positive effect of English proficiency on wages among adults who immigrated to the U.S. as children. Much of this impact appears to be mediated through education. Differences between non-English-speaking origin countries and English-speaking ones that might make immigrants from the latter a poor control group for nonlanguage age-at-arrival effects do not drive these findings. (JEL J61, J24, J31) 1
This study uses the malaria-eradication campaigns in the United States (circa 1920), and in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico (circa 1955) to measure how much childhood exposure to malaria depresses labor productivity. The campaigns began because of advances in health technology, which mitigates concerns about reverse causality. Malarious areas saw large drops in the disease thereafter. Relative to non-malarious areas, cohorts born after eradication had higher income as adults than the preceding generation. These cross-cohort changes coincided with childhood exposure to the campaigns rather than to pre-existing trends. Estimates suggest a substantial, though not predominant, role for malaria in explaining cross-region differences in income.
Are U.S. immigrants' English proficiency and social outcomes the result of their cultural preferences, or of more fundamental constraints? Using 2000 Census microdata, we relate immigrants' English proficiency, marriage, fertility and residential location variables to their age at arrival in the U.S., and in particular whether that age fell within the "critical period" of language acquisition. We interpret the differences between younger and older arrivers as effects of English-language skills and construct an instrumental variable for English-language skills. Two-stage-least-squares estimates suggest that English proficiency increases the likelihood of divorce and intermarriage. It decreases fertility and, for some, ethnic enclave residence. (JEL J24, J12, J13, J61)The increase in immigration to the United States in recent decades, much of it from nonEnglish-speaking countries, has drawn attention to the role of English-language skills in immigrant assimilation. 1 There is evidence that English proficiency helps immigrants integrate economically into their new home-English proficiency raises wages, narrowing the wage gap between immigrants and U.S. natives. Less studied is whether sounding more "American" makes immigrants act more American as well. (Section I.A discusses the related literature.) This study addresses the connection between English proficiency and social integration.The relationship between English proficiency and social assimilation among immigrants is a controversial topic in contemporary society. A commonplace hypothesis-often stated as fact -is that these variables are interrelated solely because of the culture or preferences of the immigrants themselves; that is, they choose not to integrate into U.S. society and they choose not to learn English. On the other side of the coin is the view that poor English proficiency is a constraint that impedes assimilation. In the present study, we examine this latter channel by quantifying the impact of English proficiency on marriage, fertility and residential location choices.Understanding the effects of English proficiency on social outcomes also has important policy implications. Children of immigrants comprise a large and growing share of the U.S. population -in 2002, they made up 18.7% of the U.S. population under 18 (Randy Capps, Michael Fix and Jane Reardon-Anderson, 2003)-and their lower average education and earnings in adulthood have aroused concern. 2 Better knowledge about the family and neighborhood environment in which the children of immigrants grow up should improve our ability to design 1 The 2000 U.S. Census showed that 10.4 percent of the U.S. population is foreign born, up from 7.9 percent in 1990. Moreover, the 2000 U.S. Census also indicated that 47 million U.S. residents (age 5 and over) spoke a language other than English at home and 21 million spoke English less than fluently. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptAm Econ J Appl Econ. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2010 January 28. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Autho...
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