Working Paper: NBER ID: w23322
Authors: Daron Acemoglu; Leopoldo Fergusson; Simon Johnson
Abstract: Medical and public health innovations in the 1940s quickly resulted in significant health improvements around the world. Countries with initially higher mortality from infectious diseases experienced greater increases in life expectancy, population, and - over the following 40 years - social conflict. This result is robust across alternative measures of conflict and is not driven by differential trends between countries with varying baseline characteristics. At least during this time period, a faster increase in population made social conflict more likely, probably because it increased competition for scarce resources in low income countries.
Keywords: Population; Civil War; Public Health; Conflict
JEL Codes: J01; O11; O15; Q56
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| exogenous increases in population (J11) | civil conflict (D74) |
| log population increase (J11) | civil conflict (D74) |
| log population increase (J11) | lower intensity conflicts (D74) |
| initial 1940 distribution of mortality (D39) | exogenous increases in population (J11) |
| global interventions reducing mortality (I14) | exogenous increases in population (J11) |