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Title: Replication and reanalysis of Bleakley (2007): The impacts of hookworm eradication in the American South
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2017
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Abstract: A paper published by Bleakley in this journal (Quarterly Journal of Economics 122(1)(2007), 73–117) produces evidence that the campaign to eradicate hookworm from the American South circa 1910 boosted school enrollment among children in historically endemic areas, and raised their incomes in adulthood. This comment reconstructs the Bleakley data set and reanalyzes it while hewing closely to Bleakley methods. The comment confirms the central correlation found in Bleakley, but questions the causal interpretation. Outcomes for children born in historically endemic areas indeed improved faster after eradication, which suggests, in a difference-in-difference framework, that eradication brought large benefits. But this convergence began decades earlier, and does not appear to have accelerated at the times predicted by the Bleakley causal theory. This fact emerges more sharply in the reanalysis for several reasons. The reanalysis uses 100-fold larger census microdata samples now available. It puts little interpretive weight on the tabulated regressions in the original, few of which can distinguish whether trends were preexisting. It emphasizes analysis of time series patterns, with a combination of graphical presentation and formal tests for trend breaks. And it more consistently tests for robustness to the inclusion of the Bleakley full control set.
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Authors: Roodman, David
Publisher: GiveWell
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Health, Labor Force and Occupational Structure
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