ISER Internal Seminar – Welfare Dependency and Productivity Effects of Health Shocks: Evidence from Dengue Epidemics

Sandwiches from 12:15, Seminar at 12:30

Abstract: Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral infection. Its global incidence has grown dramatically in recent decades, with about half of the world’s population now at risk (WHO, 2009). We provide evidence of the effect of dengue on labor market outcomes for people of working age in Brazil using labor force survey (PME) data. Our identification strategy exploits exogenous variation in weather conditions (i.e. temperature and relative humidity) that the epidemiology literature has found to be particularly suitable for the population dynamics of the vector species. We find that a higher dengue incidence in the local labor market area has a negative effect on the number of hours worked, especially for more vulnerable groups (i.e. self-employed). These results provide evidence of the causal effect of health shocks on contemporaneous productivity among adults.