The Value of Reductions in Child Injury Mortality in the U.S

32 Pages Posted: 31 Aug 1999 Last revised: 10 Mar 2022

See all articles by Sherry Glied

Sherry Glied

New York University (NYU) - Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Date Written: July 1999

Abstract

Child injury mortality rates have declined steadily over time and across causes of death. This paper investigates alternative explanations for this decline and evaluates their value. I assess changes in children's living circumstances, changes in the professional child injury knowledge base, changes in the information imparted to parents, and changes in the regulation of childhood behavior and, in the context of a model of health production, explore how each of these changes might have been expected to affect child safety. These hypotheses are then tested empirically using data from the National Mortality Detail Files on the number of child deaths by age, cause, and state and combine this information with data from the Current Population Survey on the characteristics of children and their families by state. I find that changes in children's living circumstances can explain little, if any of the change in child health. I find limited evidence that regulatory interventions intended to change behavior have been important. I find substantial evidence suggesting that changes in the knowledge available to parents about child health have become increasingly important, while parents' time has become less important in producing health. These results provide a first effort in understanding the dramatic reduction in child injury mortality. They also illustrate how the development of scientific information, a public good, is translated into private outcomes, and can generate growing inequality in those outcomes.

Suggested Citation

Glied, Sherry A., The Value of Reductions in Child Injury Mortality in the U.S (July 1999). NBER Working Paper No. w7204, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=170791

Sherry A. Glied (Contact Author)

New York University (NYU) - Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service ( email )

The Puck Building
295 Lafayette Street, Second Floor
New York, NY 10012
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
46
Abstract Views
1,544
PlumX Metrics