When beer is safer than water: Beer availability and mortality from waterborne illnesses

IF 5.1 1区 经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

We investigate the impact of beer on mortality during the Industrial Revolution in 18th century England. Due to the brewing process, beer represented an improvement over available water sources during this period prior to the widespread understanding of the link between water quality and human health. Using a wide range of identification strategies to derive measures of beer scarcity driven by tax increases, weather events, and soil quality, we show that beer scarcity was associated with higher mortality, especially in the summer months when mortality was more likely to be driven by waterborne illnesses related to contaminated drinking water. We also leverage variation in inherent water quality across parishes using two proxies for water quality to show that beer scarcity resulted in greater deaths in areas with worse water quality. Together, the evidence indicates that beer had a major impact on human health during this important period in economic development.

当啤酒比水更安全时啤酒供应与水传播疾病的死亡率
我们研究了啤酒对 18 世纪英国工业革命期间死亡率的影响。由于啤酒的酿造工艺,在人们普遍了解水质与人类健康之间的关系之前,这一时期的啤酒是对现有水源的一种改善。我们采用多种识别策略,得出了受税收增加、天气事件和土壤质量影响的啤酒稀缺程度,结果表明啤酒稀缺与较高的死亡率相关,尤其是在夏季,死亡率更有可能由与饮用水污染相关的水传播疾病引起。我们还利用水质的两种代用指标,对各教区固有水质的变化进行了分析,结果表明,在水质较差的地区,啤酒稀缺导致的死亡人数更多。这些证据共同表明,在经济发展的这一重要时期,啤酒对人类健康产生了重大影响。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
8.30
自引率
4.00%
发文量
126
审稿时长
72 days
期刊介绍: The Journal of Development Economics publishes papers relating to all aspects of economic development - from immediate policy concerns to structural problems of underdevelopment. The emphasis is on quantitative or analytical work, which is relevant as well as intellectually stimulating.
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