Cohort effects and life expectancy and many other facts about the history of American medicine

The cohort reaching age 55 around 1982 (born around 1927) has significantly higher mortality than the cohort 10 years younger. That higher mortality continues through the cohort passing through that age range in the mid-1990s, roughly, when the cohort born in 1933 reaches age 65. That same cohort also has higher mortality when they are 65-74 and 75-84. The story is not one of selection – a handful of less healthy people who die and leave behind healthier stock. Rather, it seems that an entire generation was rendered vulnerable by being born during and just before the Great Depression (Lleras-Muney and Moreau, 2018).

That is from a new NBER history of health care paper by Maryaline Catillon, David Cutler, and Thomas Getzen.  This piece is interesting on virtually every page.  For instance, on the rise of American science:

Of the 18 Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine awarded 1901-1920, none went to US researchers. Over the next two decades, four out of twenty-four did, then for the rest of the century, more than half.

Then:

…our analysis of Massachusetts data does not support a large impact of medical care supply on mortality in the pre-antibiotic era.

Using the best data I’ve seen to date, apart from RCTs, the authors conclude from their statistical work:

…there is little evidence that access to medical care plays a role in mortality over the entire 1965-2015 period, but it appears to have had an effect during recent years.

That is from p.33

Death rates from influenza/pneumonia and cancer seem most responsive to access to medical care.  And I had not known this:

The period from 1935 to 1950 saw the most…decline in infant and child mortality of any time period since 1900.  It is unclear how much of this change would have happened without antibiotics, but blood banking and advances in surgical techniques were among the host of distinct and incremental improvements that added to life expectancy while the health share of GDP increased only slightly.

Recommended.