Working Paper: NBER ID: w22553
Authors: Brian Beach; Werner Troesken; Nicola Tynan
Abstract: Nearly 40% of England’s privately built waterworks were municipalised in the late 19th century. We examine how this affected public health by pairing annual mortality data for over 600 registration districts, spanning 1869 to 1910, with detailed waterworks information. Identification is aided by both institutional hurdles and idiosyncratic delays in the municipalisation process. Municipalisation lowered deaths from typhoid fever, a waterborne disease, by nearly 20% but deaths from non-waterborne causes were unaffected. Results are also robust to the adoption of several strategies that control for the possibility of mean reversion and other potential confounds.
Keywords: municipalisation; water systems; public health; typhoid fever; ownership
JEL Codes: H51; H54; I18; N13
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| municipalisation (L32) | reduction in typhoid fever deaths (I14) |
| rising typhoid rates (I19) | municipalisation (L32) |
| lagged typhoid rates (I32) | municipalisation (L32) |
| municipalisation (L32) | no significant effects on non-waterborne disease mortality rates (I12) |