Do National Cancer Screening Guidelines Reduce Mortality?

36 Pages Posted: 17 Mar 2013 Last revised: 17 Oct 2014

See all articles by Adam Leive

Adam Leive

University of Virginia - Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy

Thomas Stratmann

George Mason University - Buchanan Center Political Economy; George Mason University - Mercatus Center; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Date Written: October 2014

Abstract

The effectiveness of population-level cancer screening is a salient issue in health policy that remains unresolved. This paper investigates changes in mortality after the introduction of screening guidelines for breast and prostate cancers in the United States and United Kingdom. We use differences in the timing of guideline adoption, which ages are recommended for screening, and which cancers are detectable by screening to identify the effect of guidelines. Our quadruple-differencing strategy finds a moderately sized mortality benefit from mammography and PSA screening guidelines among recommended age groups and little change in mortality rates among age groups not recommended to receive screening. Falsification tests provide additional confirmation of our results; prostate cancer rates among men did not fall after the introduction of mammography screening and breast cancer rates among women did not fall after the introduction of the PSA test.

Keywords: cancer mortality, cancer screening, difference in differences

JEL Classification: H51, I12, I18, J18

Suggested Citation

Leive, Adam and Stratmann, Thomas, Do National Cancer Screening Guidelines Reduce Mortality? (October 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2234812 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2234812

Adam Leive

University of Virginia - Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy ( email )

235 McCormick Rd.
P.O. Box 400893
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4893
United States

Thomas Stratmann (Contact Author)

George Mason University - Buchanan Center Political Economy ( email )

4400 University Drive
Fairfax, VA 22030
United States
703-993-2330 (Phone)

George Mason University - Mercatus Center ( email )

3434 Washington Blvd., 4th Floor
Arlington, VA 22201
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.mercatus.org/scholars/thomas-stratmann

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

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