Call for Papers
The Determinants of Mortality
Cambridge, MA – January 9-10, 2025

Economists and other social scientists tracking the well-being of
populations are increasingly interested in the determinants of health
and longevity. A growing body of research analyzes the respective
contributions of a variety of factors, including air and water
pollution, public policies that affect access to medical care, mental
health, social norms, and addiction, to life expectancy differences
across countries, over time, and within countries. Availability of new
and richer data sets has made it possible to develop ever-more-precise
estimates of the relative contributions of these and other factors.

To advance research on mortality disparities, the National Bureau of
Economic Research (NBER), with the support of the National Institute of
Aging (NIA), will host a two-day conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Thursday and Friday, January 9 and 10, 2025. The conference will be organized by NBER affiliates David Cutler (Harvard University) and Adriana Lleras-Muney (UCLA). The Journal of Human Resources will consider papers presented at the conference for potential publication in a special issue, subject to standard editorial review.

The organizers are particularly interested in work that provides new
conceptual frameworks for assessing empirical regularities or that
quantifies the contribution of various factors to explaining mortality
differences. They welcome perspectives from economics and other
disciplines such as demography, public health, medicine, and sociology.
Potential topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

– The cumulative impact of early shocks, such as family economic
distress or exposure to infectious disease, pollution, or political
unrest, on later life longevity.
– The extent to which mental health determines health behaviors and
mortality, including its role in explaining death of despairs, its
contribution to the ongoing opioid epidemic, and its influence through
the recent rise in the suicide rate among the young.
– The effect of pollution decline on life expectancy and on the gradient
in life expectancy by socio-economic status. How does the effect of
pollution on life expectancy compare with the role of medical
innovations or internal migration within nations?
– The role of geographic disparities in factors such as weather and
health care quality in determining mortality, and the persistence of
these effects in the presence of migration at various stages of the
life-cycle.
– The role of social norms and institutions in explaining why some
populations are not at the frontier of health, including the role of
trust between patients and doctors, or governments and their citizens.
– The role of public policies including innovation incentives, health
insurance, and the regulation and public provision of health care
services, as well as other social policies that are not designed to
explicitly improve health, in affecting longevity.

To be considered for presentation at the meeting, please upload papers
or extended abstracts no later than 11:59pm EDT on Wednesday, July 31, 2024 using the following link:
https://conference.nber.org/confsubmit/backend/cfp?id=DMs25

Authors chosen to present papers will be notified by early September. 
Papers that review existing literature but do not present new research
findings will be considered for presentation at the conference, but not
for post-conference publication. In keeping with NBER protocols, papers
may not make policy recommendations.

The organizers will consider complete papers or papers that will be
ready to present by January 2025. Please do not submit papers that have been accepted for publication. The organizers welcome empirical and theoretical research, papers by scholars who are early in their careers and who are not NBER affiliates, and submissions from researchers who are members of groups that are under-represented in the economics profession. Please feel free to share this call for papers widely with any researchers who might be working on projects that are suitable for presentation.

The NBER will cover hotel and economy-class conference travel for up to two authors per paper. Questions about this meeting should be directed to tricias@nber.org.