Working Paper: NBER ID: w29622
Authors: Kelly Bishop; Nicolai V. Kuminoff; Sophie Mathes; Alvin Murphy
Abstract: We provide the first evidence that spatial variation in all-cause mortality risk is capitalized into US housing prices. Using a hedonic framework, we recover the annual implicit cost of a 0.1 percentage-point reduction in mortality risk among older Americans and find that this figure is both relatively low and decreasing in age, from $1,346 for a 67 year old to $246 for an 87 year old. These estimates are one-fifth of the size of comparable estimates found in the labor market, suggesting that the housing market provides an alternative, substantially cheaper channel to reducing mortality risk.
Keywords: mortality risk; housing markets; implicit cost; hedonic framework
JEL Codes: H0; I0; Q0; R0
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| location-based mortality risk (J17) | housing prices (R31) |
| age (J14) | implicit cost of reducing mortality risk (J17) |
| mortality risk reduction (I12) | housing market implicit costs (R31) |
| spatial variation in mortality risk (I14) | implicit costs (D61) |
| spatial variation in housing prices (R31) | implicit costs (D61) |