Modern Medicine and the 20th Century Decline in Mortality: Evidence on the Impact of Sulfa DrugsSeema Jayachandran, Adriana Lleras-Muney, Kimberly V. Smith
NBER Working Paper No. 15089 This paper studies the contribution of sulfa drugs, a groundbreaking medical innovation in the 1930s, to declines in U.S. mortality. For several often-fatal infectious diseases, sulfa drugs represented the first effective treatment. Using time-series and difference-in-differences methods (with diseases unaffected by sulfa drugs as a comparison group), we find that sulfa drugs led to a 25 to 40 percent decline in maternal mortality, 17 to 36 percent decline in pneumonia mortality, and 52 to 67 percent decline in scarlet-fever mortality between 1937 and 1943. Altogether, they reduced mortality by 2 to 4 percent and increased life expectancy by 0.4 to 0.8 years. We also find that sulfa drugs benefited whites more than blacks.
The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this.
You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. This paper is available as PDF (199 K) or via email.
Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded these:
|
Contact Us
People
James Poterba, presidentJames Poterba is President of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also the Mitsui Professor of Economics at M.I.T. |
NBER ResearchersResearchers by NBER ProgramComplete NBER Research Family List |
 |
Other People LinksStaffBoard of Directors |