Women's Empowerment and Child Survival in the Historical United States

说明(申请人提供)：赋予妇女权力是国际发展议程上的一项高度优先目标。它也越来越被认为是改善人类福利的一个重要--如果不是根本的--手段。特别是，提高妇女地位被认为会增加对儿童的投资。一项数量不多但不断增加的研究表明，女性相对比男性更重视儿童福利和公共产品的提供。然而，关于这一主题的发展政策辩论仍在继续，部分原因是关于妇女地位如何影响儿童健康的实证文献仍然很少。这项拟议的研究将通过借鉴历史上的美国，为妇女选举权如何影响婴儿和儿童死亡率提供新的证据。20世纪初，美国见证了妇女地位的巨大进步和婴儿和儿童存活率的前所未有的改善。这些经历为了解两者之间的关系和推动对历史死亡率下降的科学理解提供了尚未实现的机会。该项目有三个具体目标：(1)以数字格式汇编和传播按原因和年龄和性别分列的国家一级年度历史死亡率统计数据(以前这些数据只有印刷版)；(2)估计通过选举制度表达妇女意愿如何以及通过什么途径影响婴儿和儿童死亡率；(3)审查由妇女促进的保护性公共卫生和健康教育措施是否可以取代或补充其他重大公共卫生干预措施，如饮用水消毒(这是干预效果的一个关键但鲜为人知的决定因素)。这项研究有几个吸引人的特点。首先，20世纪初的美国在经济发展水平和流行病学方面与今天的许多发展中国家非常相似。因此，它为检验目前正在讨论的各种发展政策的效果提供了一个很好的天然实验室。其次，该项目将利用美国联邦制在州级妇女选举权法律制定时间上的巨大差异。第三，可以使用各种证伪练习来检验经验策略的有效性。最后，20世纪初有关美国的数据比今天大多数发展中国家的数据要丰富得多，这些国家正在制定类似的政策。通过开发和传播新数字化的历史州一级死亡数据，该项目也将帮助该领域的其他研究人员。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The empowerment of women is a high-priority objective on international development agendas. It is also increasingly considered to be an important - if not fundamental - means of improving human welfare as well. In particular, the advancement of women is thought to increase investments in children. A small but growing body of research suggests that women value child welfare and the provision of public goods relatively more than men. However, development policy debate on this topic continues in part because the empirical literature on how women's status influences child health remains thin. The proposed research will provide new evidence on how women's suffrage influences infant and child mortality by drawing lessons from the historical United States. Early in the Twentieth Century, America witnessed both large advances in the status of women and unprecedented improvements in infant and child survival. These experiences present unrealized opportunities to learn about the relationship between the two and to advance the scientific understanding of historical mortality declines. This project has three specific aims: (1) To compile and disseminate annual state-level historical mortality statistics by cause and by age and sex in digital format (previously this data was only available in print), (2) To estimate how and through what pathways the expression of women's preferences through the electoral system influenced infant and child mortality, and (3) To examine whether protective public health and health education measures promoted by women are substitutes or complements for other major public health interventions such as drinking water disinfection (this is a critical but poorly understood determinant of intervention effectiveness). There are several attractive features of this research. First, early Twentieth Century America was remarkably similar to many developing countries today both in level of economic development and in epidemiological profile. It therefore provides a good natural laboratory for examining the effects of various development policies presently being discussed. Second, this project will take advantage of enormous variation in the timing of state-level women's suffrage laws created by America's system of federalism. Third, a variety of falsification exercises are available to test the validity of the empirical strategy. Finally, data on America during the early Twentieth Century is much richer than most data from developing countries today where comparable policies are being enacted. By developing and disseminating newly digitized historical state-level mortality data, this project will aid other researchers working in this area as well.