How the other half died: immigration and mortality in US cities
Files
First author draft
Date
2022-02-01
Authors
Ager, Philipp
Feigenbaum, James J.
Hansen, Casper Worm
Ren Tan, Hui
Version
First author draft
OA Version
Citation
P. Ager, J. Feigenbaum, C.W. Hansen, H. Ren Tan. 2022. "How the Other Half Died: Immigration and Mortality in Us Cities."
Abstract
Fears of immigrants as a threat to public health have a long and sordid history. At the turn of the
20th century, when immigrants made up one-third of the population in crowded American cities,
contemporaries blamed high urban mortality rates on the newest arrivals. We evaluate how the
implementation of country-specific immigration quotas in the 1920s affected urban health. Cities
with larger quota-induced reductions in immigration experienced a persistent decline in mortality
rates, driven by a reduction in deaths from infectious diseases. The unfavorable living conditions
immigrants endured explains the majority of the effect as quotas reduced residential crowding and
mortality declines were largest in cities where immigrants resided in more crowded conditions and
where public health resources were stretched thinnest.
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This work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 license.