Information and Disease Prevention: Tuberculosis Dispensaries

Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading cause of death worldwide according to the WHO. This paper estimates the effect of TB dispensaries, designed to prevent the spread of the disease before the advent of modern medicine. Our difference-in-differences estimation reveals that the roll-out of the TB dispensaries across Danish cities led to a 16 percent decline in the TB mortality rate, but no signifficant impacts on other diseases when performing placebo regressions. We obtain very similar estimates from a triple-differences setup, warranting a causal interpretation of our findings. Overall, our conclusion suggests, contrary to McKeown (1976), that public policy played an important role for the decline in TB mortality. It also suggests that dispensaries are of policy relevance for developing countries today as a measure to counter the externalities created by TB and modern drug resistant strains.