Casper Worm Hansen

Modern Gender Roles and Agricultural History: The Neolithic Inheritance

This research proposes the hypothesis that societies with long histories of agriculture have less equality in gender roles as a consequence of more patriarchal values and beliefs regarding the proper role of women in society. We test this hypothesis in a world sample of countries, in regions of Europe, and among immigrants and children of immigrants living in the US. This evidence reveals a significant negative relationship between years of agriculture history and female labor force participation rates, as well as other measures of equality in contemporary gender roles. This finding is robust to the inclusion of an extensive set of possible confounders, including historical plough-use and the length of the growing season. We argue that two mechanisms can explain the result: (1) societies with longer agricultural histories had a higher level of technological advancement which in the Malthusian Epoch translated into higher fertility and a diminished role for women outside the home; (2) transition to cereal agriculture requires time consuming processing, and this would tend to be an activity carried out by women.

Life expectancy and human capital: Evidence from the international epidemiological transition

Exploiting preintervention variation in mortality from various infectious diseases, together with the time variation arising from medical breakthroughs in the late 1940s and the 1950s, this study examines how a large positive shock to life expectancy influenced the formation of human capital within countries during the second half of the 20th century. The results establish that the rise in life expectancy was behind a significant part of the increase in human capital over this period. According to the baseline estimate, for one additional year of life expectancy, years of schooling increase by 0.17 year. Moreover, the evidence suggests that declines in pneumonia mortality are the underlying cause of this finding, indicating that improved childhood health increases human capital investments.

Fertility and Early-Life Mortality: Evidence from Smallpox Vaccination in Sweden

We examine how the introduction of smallpox vaccination affected early-life mortality and fertility in Sweden during the first half of the 19th century. We demonstrate that parishes in counties with higher levels of smallpox mortality prior to the introduction of vaccination experienced a greater decline in infant mortality afterwards. Exploiting this finding in an instrumental-variable approach reveals that this decline had a negative effect on the birth rate, while the number of surviving children and population growth remained unaffected. These results suggest that the decline in early-life mortality cannot account for the onset of the fertility decline in Sweden.

The Rise in Life Expectancy and Economic Growth in the 20th Century

This study documents that the growth in life expectancy over the 20th century decreased per capita GDP growth and increased population growth. By exploiting significant advances in medical technologies, starting to diffuse in the 1940s, the analysis establishes that countries with higher levels of infectious-disease mortality prior to the medical breakthrough experienced higher growth rates in life expectancy and population size, and lower growth rates in per capita GDP in the time after the medical breakthroughs. These findings are robust to the inclusion of initial life expectancy and initial GDP per capita. The evidence presented here therefore complements the conclusions inferred in the research by Acemoglu and Johnson (2007).

Health and Development: A Neoclassical Perspective

Previous research establishes that the rise in life expectancy during the second half of the twentieth century led to larger, but not wealthier, populations. In terms of the neoclassical growth theory, these findings indicate that the potential positive effects of health on human capital and productivity (TFP) are limited. The current paper decomposes this corollary. Specifically, it demonstrates that life expectancy promotes human capital skills, which, according to the neoclassical theory, suggests that the TFP elasticity with respect to health is close to zero.

Cause of death and development in the US

Exploiting cross-state variation in infectious causes of death, along with time variation arising from medical innovations toward the middle of the twentieth century, this study examines the consequences of a positive health shock in the US. It establishes that states with higher levels of mortality from infectious causes prior to the onset of the era of big medicine experienced greater increases in life expectancy, population, and total GDP after its onset, whereas per capita GDP remained largely unchanged. Together the evidence suggests that the rise in life expectancy had no significant effect on living standards in the US during the time period 1940–1980. These results are robust to controlling for initial health and initial economic conditions.Exploiting pre-intervention variation in flu/pneumonia, tuberculosis and maternal mortality, together with time variation arising from medical breakthroughs starting in the late 1930s, this paper studies the aggregate impact of large health shocks across US states. The analysis demonstrates that the shocks influenced income per capita in different ways. While the shock to flu/pneumonia mortality has been conductive for development, the large reduction in the incidence of tuberculosis deaths has been a negative force in the development of US states over the second-half of 20th century. In addition, the decline in maternal mortality has a fragile, but positive relationship with income per capita. Because these specific health shocks affected mortality across the life cycle differently, the evidence here underscores the general tenet of regarding health as multifaceted.

Life Expectancy and Education: Evidence from the Cardiovascular Revolution

In this study we investigate the causal impact of increasing adult longevity on higher education. We exploit the fourth stage of the epidemiological transition, i.e. the unexpected decline of deaths from heart attack and stroke in the 1970s as a large positive health shock that affected predominantly old age mortality. Using a differences-in-differences estimation strategy we find across U.S. states that the cardiovascular revolution led to an increase in adult life expectancy by about 2 years, which caused higher education enrollment to increase by 7 percentage points, i.e. 30 percent of the observed increase from 1970 to 2000. Our findings are robust to the inclusion of state-specific health trends and a host of confounding variables. They suggest large effects of improving longevity on higher education enrollment.

Climate Shocks and (very) Long-Run Productivity

The present study examines the link between temperature and long-run productivity for a balanced panel of 21 countries, covering the period 1000?1800 CE. Collectively the countries examined accounted for about 2/3 of the global population by 1700. Each epoch in the analysis is a century long, which thus allows time for human adaptation after a temperature shock has occurred. Our principal ?nding is that lower temperatures worked to reduce productivity growth during the period in focus, consistent with contributions to the literature in economic history that argue the Little Ice Age was as a contractionary shock.

National Immigration Quotas and Local Economic Growth

The introduction of immigration quotas in the 1920s fundamentally changed US migration policy. We exploit this policy change to estimate the effect of immigration on local economic growth and industry development. Our analysis demonstrates that areas with larger pre-existing communities of immigrants of nationalities restricted by the quota system experienced larger population declines in the subsequent decades as the quotas reduced the supply of immigrants to these areas. We then show that the quotas led to negative agglomeration effects in the manufacturing sector, while productivity losses are only visible in urban counties, cities, and immigrant dependent industries. We also ?find that the quota system pushed native workers into low-wage occupations.

Increasing Life Expectancy and the Fall and Rise in the Retirement Age

This paper provides a theoretical foundation for a U-shaped evolution in the retirement age. By assuming no markets for annuities markets in a simple two period overlapping generations model with lifetime uncertainty, we show that increasing life expectancy can explain the observed evolution in the retirement age. In addition, we show that annuity market imperfections may provide a utilitarian rationale for an unfunded public pension system that counterbalances the intergenerational transfer of wealth arising from unintended bequests.