Epidemics and the Economy- An Economic Analysis of the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic in Scandinavia

一个多世纪以来，大多数西方社会的预期寿命一直在增加，欠发达国家也在效仿。一条迅速演变的文献表明，早期生命状况的影响比之前承认的要大得多。因此，子宫内和儿童时期的疾病环境可能会在整个生命周期中甚至对后代产生严重的后果。然而，在以前的文献中，有一个方面被很大程度上忽视了，那就是与子宫内接触疾病相关的基本识别问题。除了属于社会中最脆弱成员的儿童--孕妇也是如此，众所周知，母亲及其子女的健康和社会经济成果彼此之间存在着复杂的关系。因此，仅确定宫内疾病环境确实重要是不足以理解它为什么和如何重要的。为了研究这个问题，我们将注意力集中在所谓的西班牙流感大流行上。由于几个原因，1918年至1920年间在世界各地传播的这场大流行构成了本分析的理想背景。首先，已经过了足够的时间，大流行的大部分长期影响已经充分发挥作用。其次，西班牙流感大流行造成的死亡人数足以对经济产生影响。第三，有人声称这种疾病是盲目的，因为它没有明显的社会经济梯度，这意味着这种大流行形成了一个极好的自然实验。特别是，我们的目标是用斯堪的纳维亚半岛的高质量数据分析三组不同的研究问题1)分析疫情传播的空间和社会经济模式与疫情相关的死亡率和发病率是否存在社会经济梯度？由于这段时间的特点是大量适龄劳动人口在不同地点之间流动，大流行是否导致回避行为和国内移民流动中断？2)流感暴露的短期和长期影响子宫内暴露对儿童死亡率和成人结果(教育、收入、父母背景因素和选择性死亡率是否会影响之前研究的估计？宫内感染主要是通过母亲的健康冲击(妊娠疤痕形成)，而不是孩子可能经历的健康冲击(胎儿接触)，还是存在第三种机制，影响育儿质量，但与怀孕期间的流感(母亲疤痕)关系不大？3)疫情的宏观经济影响疫情对工资、资本回报和贫困率等宏观经济结果的短期和中期影响是什么？在劳动力供应和人力资本遭受一段时间的大幅冲击后，经济如何调整到新的长期均衡？

For more than a century, life expectancy has been increasing in most Western societies, and less developed countries follow path. One rapidly evolving strand of the literature suggests that early life conditions matter to a much larger extent than previously acknowledged. Accordingly, the disease environment in utero and during childhood may have severe consequences throughout the life cycle and even for subsequent generations.However, one aspect which has been largely overlooked in the previous literature is the fundamental identification problem associated with an in utero exposure to disease. Beside children, who belong to the most vulnerable members of Society- pregnant women do as well, and it is well-known that health and socio-economic outcomes of mothers and their children stand in a complex relationship to each other. Thus, establishing that the in utero disease environment does matter is not sufficient to understand why and how it matters.In order to study this issue, we focus our attention on the so-called Spanish flu pandemic. This pandemic, which travelled the world between 1918 and 1920 forms an ideal setting for this analysis, for several reasons. First, sufficient time has elapsed for most of the long term effects of the pandemic to have worked out fully. Second, the Spanish flu pandemic claimed a death toll large enough to have had repercussions on the economy. Third, it has been claimed that the disease was blind in the sense that it did not have a clear socioeconomic gradient which would mean that the pandemic forms an excellent natural experiment. In particular, we aim at analyzing three distinct groups of research questions with high-quality data from Scandinavia 1) Analyzing spatial and socioeconomic patterns in the spread of the pandemicWas there a socioeconomic gradient in the mortality and morbidity related to the pandemic?Since the time period was characterized by large flows of working-age people moving between locations, did the pandemic lead to avoidance behaviour and disrupted internal migration flows?2) Short- and long-term effects of influenza exposureWhat are effects of in utero exposure on child mortality and adult outcomes (educational, incomes, employment) and did parental background factors and selective mortality bias estimates of previous studies?Did the in utero exposure run primarily through the mother's health shock (pregnancy scarring) as opposed to the health shock possibly experienced by the child (fetal exposure) or is there are third mechanism that influences the quality of parenting but have little to do with influenza during pregnancy (maternal scarring)?3) Macroeconomic implications of the pandemicWhat were the short- and medium-term effects of the pandemic on macroeconomic outcomes such as wages, capital returns and poverty rates?How does the economy adjust to a new long run equilibrium after a substantial one period shock to labor supply and human capital?