The Health Toll of Import Competition

No 12924, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper assesses the effect of import competition on the labor market and health outcomes of US workers. We first show that import shocks affect employment and income, but only in areas where jobs are more intense in routine tasks. Exploiting over 40 million individual observations on health and mortality, we find that import had a detrimental effect on physical and mental health that is concentrated in those areas and exhibits strong persistence. It decreased health care utilisation and increased hospitalisation for a large set of conditions, more difficult to treat. The mortality hazard of workers in manufacturing increased by up to 6 percent per billion dollar import increase.

Keywords: health behaviour; health; routine tasks; import competition; hospitalisation; mortality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 61 pages
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Published - published in: Economic Journal, 2020, 130 (630), 1501 - 1540

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https://docs.iza.org/dp12924.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Health Toll of Import Competition (2020)
Working Paper: The Health Toll of Import Competition (2020)
Working Paper: The Health Toll of Import Competition (2020)
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