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Seminar

Sick of Your Poor Neighborhood? Quasi-Experimental Evidence on Neighborhood Effects on Health

  • Series
    Research on Monday
  • Speaker(s)
    Linea Hasager (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
  • Field
    Empirical Microeconomics
  • Location
    Erasmus University Rotterdam, Campus Woudestein, Polak 2-16
    Rotterdam
  • Date and time

    September 09, 2024
    11:30 - 12:30

Abstract
Does living in a low-income neighborhood have negative health consequences? We document causal neighborhood effects on health by exploiting a Spatial Dispersal Policy that quasi-randomly resettled refugees across neighborhoods from 1986 to 1998. Refugees allocated to low-income neighborhoods had a 12 percent higher risk of having developed a lifestyle related disease 8 to 15 years after immigration compared with those allocated to high-income neighborhoods. Our results suggest that interaction with neighbors and the characteristics of the immediate environment are important determinants for health outcomes. Differences in health care access, ethnic networks, and individual labor market outcomes cannot explain our findings. Joint paper with Mia Jørgensen. Link to full paper here.