How the Other Half Died: Immigration and Mortality in Us Cities

75 Pages Posted: 4 Aug 2020 Last revised: 16 Aug 2024

See all articles by Philipp Ager

Philipp Ager

University of Southern Denmark - Department of Business and Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

James Feigenbaum

Boston University - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Casper Worm Hansen

University of Copenhagen - Department of Economics; University of Copenhagen

Hui Ren Tan

National University of Singapore (NUS)

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: July 2020

Abstract

Fears of immigrants as a threat to public health have a long and sordid history. At the turn of the 20th century, when millions of immigrants crowded into dense American cities, contemporaries blamed the high urban mortality penalty on the newest arrivals. Nativist sentiments eventually led to the implementation of restrictive quota acts in the 1920s, substantially curtailing immigration. We capture the "missing immigrants" induced by the quotas to estimate the effect of immigration on mortality. We find that cities with more missing immigrants experienced sharp declines in deaths from infectious diseases from the mid-1920s until the late 1930s. The blame for these negative mortality effects lies not with the immigrants, but on the living conditions they endured. We show that mortality declines were largest in cities where immigrants resided in the most crowded and squalid conditions and where public health resources were stretched the thinnest. Though immigrants did die from infectious diseases at higher rates than the US-born, the mortality decline we find is primarily driven by crowding not changes in population composition or contagion, as we show mortality improvements for both US- and foreign-born populations in more quota-affected cities.

Suggested Citation

Ager, Philipp and Feigenbaum, James and Hansen, Casper Worm and Hansen, Casper Worm and Ren Tan, Hui, How the Other Half Died: Immigration and Mortality in Us Cities (July 2020). NBER Working Paper No. w27480, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3665477

Philipp Ager (Contact Author)

University of Southern Denmark - Department of Business and Economics ( email )

DK-5230 Odense
Denmark

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

James Feigenbaum

Boston University - Department of Economics ( email )

270 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02215
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Casper Worm Hansen

University of Copenhagen - Department of Economics ( email )

Øster Farimagsgade 5
Copenhagen K, DK 1153
Denmark

University of Copenhagen ( email )

Nørregade 10
Copenhagen, København DK-1165
Denmark

Hui Ren Tan

National University of Singapore (NUS) ( email )

1E Kent Ridge Road
NUHS Tower Block Level 7
Singapore, 119228
Singapore

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