Thread by @JustinSandefur

Apropos of nothing.... there's a fascinating economics literature on the long-term consequences of the 1918 Spanish Flu.

1/N

Roughly a third of the world population contracted the Spanish flu, and it killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people. Almost 20m in India alone. That's cataclysmic. birdflubook.org/resources/NIAL…

But the long-term effects from in utero exposure are also pretty daunting.

2/N

First off, Almond (@JPolEcon 2006) asked:

"Is the 1918 Influenza Pandemic Over?"
journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.108…

Nope. Circa 1980, the 1918 birth cohort still showed
- Increased male disability
- Reduced high school graduation
- Increased welfare reliance for minorities and women

3/N

@JPolEcon In Brazil, Nelson (@JHealthEcon 2009) finds huge labor market impacts.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.100…

~70 years later the 1919-Q2 birth cohort was about 25% less likely to have gone to college, *and* earned 25% less per hour conditional on schooling

4/N

@JPolEcon @JHealthEcon In Taiwan, Lin and Liu (@JHealthEcon 2014) also find health impacts among the elderly.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

The 1919 cohort shows a significant drop in high school, and increases in kidney disease, respiratory disease, and diabetes… circa 1989!

5/N

We're a looooong way from 1918 numbers, but all of this seems to point toward in utero exposure as a pretty important mechanism tying the current pandemic to long-term economic and health consequences.

God spare the 2021 birth cohort.

6/N

For a nice review of this literature -- and the long-term effects of early-life exposure to civil war, famine, and disease -- Janet Currie and @tom_vogl have a nice review paper here:
nber.org/papers/w18371.…

/end