Should-Read: David Jacks et al.: Infant Mortality and the Repeal of Federal Prohibition

Should-Read: David Jacks et al.: Infant Mortality and the Repeal of Federal Prohibition: “Exploiting county-level variation in prohibition status…

…this paper asks…. What were the effects of the repeal of federal prohibition on infant mortality? And… were there any significant externalities from the individual policy choices of counties and states on their neighbors? We find that dry counties with at least one wet neighbor saw baseline infant mortality increase by roughly 3%. Cumulating across the six years from 1934 to 1939, this would suggest a substantial number of excess infant deaths which can be attributed to the policy externalities alone arising from the repeal of federal prohibition in 1933. We argue that such policy externalities should be a key consideration in the contemporary policy debate on the prohibition of illicit substances.