Question

Spanish flu and it's imapct on European economy describe it

Answer 1

(1) The pandemic was one of the severest and deadliest pandemics in human history, but it has hitherto received only scant attention in the economic literature.

(2) Despite representing an unparalleled labour supply shock. In this paper, we exploit seemingly exogenous variation in incidence rates between Swedish regions to estimate the impact of the pandemic.

(3) The pandemic led to a significant increase in poorhouse rates. There is also evidence that capital returns were negatively affected by the pandemic. However, contrary to predictions, we find no discernible effect on earnings.

Answer 2

In Europe in 1918, influenza spread through Spain, France, Great Britain and Italy, causing havoc with military operations during the First World War. The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed more than 50 million people worldwide. In addition, its socioeconomic consequences were huge.

“Spanish flu”, as the infection was dubbed, hit different age-groups, displaying a so-called “W-trend”, typically with two spikes in children and the elderly. However, healthy young adults were also affected.

In order to avoid alarming the public, several local health authorities refused to reveal the numbers of people affected and deaths. Consequently, it was very difficult to assess the impact of the disease at the time.

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