Working Paper: NBER ID: w25975
Authors: Amy Finkelstein; Matthew Gentzkow; Heidi L. Williams
Abstract: We estimate the effect of current location on elderly mortality by analyzing outcomes of movers in the Medicare population. We control for movers' origin locations as well as a rich vector of pre-move health measures. We also develop a novel strategy to adjust for remaining unobservables, based on the assumption that the relative importance of observables and unobservables correlated with movers' destinations is the same as the relative importance of those correlated with movers' origins. We estimate substantial effects of current location. Moving from a 10th to a 90th percentile location would increase life expectancy at age 65 by 1.1 years, and equalizing location effects would reduce cross-sectional variation in life expectancy by 15 percent. Places with favorable life expectancy effects tend to have higher quality and quantity of health care, less extreme climates, lower crime rates, and higher socioeconomic status
Keywords: mortality; migration; health capital; place effects
JEL Codes: H51; I1; I11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| equalizing location effects (C21) | cross-sectional variation in life expectancy (I14) |
| equalizing health capital across areas (I14) | cross-sectional variation in life expectancy (I14) |
| current location has no direct impact on health capital in the short run (I15) | elderly mortality (J26) |
| favorable place effects (R38) | elderly mortality (J26) |
| current location (R30) | elderly mortality (J26) |
| moving from a 10th percentile location to a 90th percentile location (J62) | elderly mortality (J26) |