AND CHILD SURVIVAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Women’s choices appear to place greater weight on child welfare and the provision of public goods than those of men. Improving the status of women is therefore seen as a potent means of increasing investments in children. This paper presents new evidence on how a historical milestone in the advancement of American women – their enfranchisement through suffrage rights – helped children to benefit from the scientific breakthroughs of the bacteriological revolution. Consistent with standard models of electoral competition, I find that suffrage laws were followed by immediate shifts in legislative behavior and large, sudden increases in local public health spending. This growth in public health spending fueled unprecedented door-to-door hygiene campaigns, and child mortality in turn declined rapidly by 8-15 % (20,000 annual child deaths nationwide) as cause-specific reductions occurred exclusively among infectious childhood killers sensitive to hygienic conditions