IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/13683.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Aging and Death under a Dollar a Day

Author

Listed:
  • Abhijit V. Banerjee
  • Esther Duflo

Abstract

This paper uses household survey data form several developing countries to investigate whether the poor (defined as those living under $1 or $2 dollars a day at PPP) and the non poor have different mortality rates in old age. We construct a proxy measure of longevity, which is the probability that an adult's mother and father are alive. The non-poor's mothers are more likely to be alive than the poor's mothers. Using panel data set for Indonesia and Vietnam, we also find that older adults are significantly more likely to have died five years later if they are poor. The direction of causality is unclear: the poor may be poor because they are sick (and thus more likely to die), or they could die because they are poor.

Suggested Citation

  • Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2007. "Aging and Death under a Dollar a Day," NBER Working Papers 13683, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13683
    Note: AG
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w13683.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Duncan Thomas & Elizabeth Frankenberg & James P. Smith, 2001. "Lost but Not Forgotten: Attrition and Follow-up in the Indonesia Family Life Survey," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 36(3), pages 556-592.
    2. Elizabeth Frankenberg & James P. Smith & Duncan Thomas, 2003. "Economic Shocks, Wealth, and Welfare," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 38(2).
    3. Duncan Thomas & Elizabeth Frankenberg & James P. Smith, 2001. "Lost but Not Forgotten: Attrition and Follow-up in the Indonesia Family Life Survey," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 36(3), pages 556-592.
    4. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2007. "The Economic Lives of the Poor," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(1), pages 141-168, Winter.
    5. Angus Deaton, 2005. "Measuring Poverty," QA - Rivista dell'Associazione Rossi-Doria, Associazione Rossi Doria, issue 1, March.
      • Angus Deaton, 2004. "Measuring poverty," Working Papers 170, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Research Program in Development Studies..
    6. Abhijit Banerjee & Angus Deaton & Esther Duflo, 2004. "Wealth, Health, and Health Services in Rural Rajasthan," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 326-330, May.
    7. repec:pri:rpdevs:deaton_povertymeasured is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Banerjee, Abhijit Vinayak & Benabou, Roland & Mookherjee, Dilip (ed.), 2006. "Understanding Poverty," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195305203, Decembrie.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schultz, T. Paul, 2010. "Population and Health Policies," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Dani Rodrik & Mark Rosenzweig (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 4785-4881, Elsevier.
    2. Armando Barrientos & Julia Mase, 2011. "Poverty transitions among older households in Brazil and South Africa," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series 15011, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    3. Sarmistha Pal & Robert Palacios, 2011. "Understanding Poverty among the Elderly in India: Implications for Social Pension Policy," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(7), pages 1017-1037.
    4. Barrientos, Armando, 2012. "What is the Role of Social Pensions in Asia?," ADBI Working Papers 351, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    5. Kaushal, Neeraj, 2014. "How Public Pension affects Elderly Labor Supply and Well-being: Evidence from India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 214-225.
    6. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2008. "What Is Middle Class about the Middle Classes around the World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 3-28, Spring.
    7. Casabonne, Ursula & Kenny, Charles, 2012. "The Best Things in Life are (Nearly) Free: Technology, Knowledge, and Global Health," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 21-35.
    8. Mitra, Sophie & Posarac, Aleksandra & Vick, Brandon, 2013. "Disability and Poverty in Developing Countries: A Multidimensional Study," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 1-18.
    9. Gustavo Adolfo Caballero Orozco, 2010. "Risk Preferences Under Extreme Poverty: A Field Experiment," Documentos CEDE 7717, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    10. Luis Rene Caceres, 2022. "Idle Youth and Macroeconomics in Latin America," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 14(1), pages 1-98, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mark R. Rosenzweig, 2003. "Payoffs from Panels in Low-Income Countries: Economic Development and Economic Mobility," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 112-117, May.
    2. Aneel Karnani, 2009. "The Bottom of the Pyramid Strategy for Reducing Poverty: A Failed Promise," Working Papers 80, United Nations, Department of Economics and Social Affairs.
    3. Steven Stillman & Duncan Thomas, 2008. "Nutritional Status During an Economic Crisis: Evidence from Russia," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(531), pages 1385-1417, August.
    4. Witoelar, Firman, 2005. "Inter-household Allocations within Extended Family: Evidence from the Indonesia Family Life Survey," Center Discussion Papers 28472, Yale University, Economic Growth Center.
    5. Duncan Thomas & Elizabeth Frankenberg, 2007. "Household Responses to the Financial Crisis in Indonesia: Longitudinal Evidence on Poverty, Resources, and Well-Being," NBER Chapters, in: Globalization and Poverty, pages 517-560, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Patricia Justino & Philip Verwimp, 2013. "Poverty Dynamics, Violent Conflict, and Convergence in R wanda," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59(1), pages 66-90, March.
    7. Pravina Devpersadh Oodith & Sanjana Brijball Parumasur, 2017. "Brand Consciousness of BOP Consumers in South Africa," Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, AMH International, vol. 9(3), pages 82-100.
    8. Bernal Lobato, N., 2014. "Essays in applied microeconomics," Other publications TiSEM 9b638b3d-2f83-452a-b2c8-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Elizabeth Frankenberg & Duncan Thomas, 2017. "Human Capital and Shocks: Evidence on Education, Health, and Nutrition," Working Papers 2017-035, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    10. Kleemans, Marieke, 2015. "Migration Choice under Risk and Liquidity Constraints," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 200702, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    11. Subha Mani, 2012. "Is there Complete, Partial, or No Recovery from Childhood Malnutrition? – Empirical Evidence from Indonesia," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 74(5), pages 691-715, October.
    12. Smith, James P., 2021. "The HRS around the world surveys—A review," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 18(C).
    13. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo, 2007. "The Economic Lives of the Poor," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(1), pages 141-168, Winter.
    14. Firman Witoelar, 2013. "Risk Sharing within the Extended Family: Evidence from the Indonesia Family Life Survey," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 62(1), pages 65-94.
    15. Bernal, Noelia & Carpio, Miguel A. & Klein, Tobias J., 2017. "The effects of access to health insurance: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design in Peru," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 122-136.
    16. Eduard Marinov, 2019. "The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics," Economic Thought journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences - Economic Research Institute, issue 6, pages 78-116.
    17. Elizabeth Frankenberg & Duncan Thomas, 2017. "Human Capital and Shocks: Evidence on Education, Health, and Nutrition," NBER Chapters, in: The Economics of Poverty Traps, pages 23-56, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Susmita Baulia, 2020. "Cash incentives to mothers or to community health workers - what contributes better to the health of the mother and the newborn? Evidence from India," Discussion Papers 133, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    19. Lombardo, Vincenzo, 2008. "Poor’s behaviour and inequality traps: the role of human capital," MPRA Paper 14511, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Barnes,Douglas French & Khandker,Shahidur R. & Nguyen,Minh Huu & Samad,Hussain A., 2009. "Welfare impacts of rural electrification : evidence from Vietnam," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5057, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13683. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.