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David Molitor

@davidmolitor.bsky.social
32 followers 0 following 11 posts

Economist and Associate Professor at Illinois Gies College of Business. davidmolitor.com

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David Molitor @davidmolitor.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
8/ We find these loans have large benefits to costs: The mean loan: • $7.4 million total cost (capital + O&M over 25 years) • ~57 premature deaths prevented • Benefit/cost ratio: 22.7 Cost per premature death avoided: $130,000—well below standard VSL estimates.
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David Molitor @davidmolitor.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
6/ What we find: Pre-loan: Parallel trends in mortality between recipient and non-recipient systems Post-loan: Mortality gradually declines in recipient communities Effect size: ~0.5% reduction in mortality relative to baseline
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David Molitor @davidmolitor.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
3/ Challenge: Geography. The average U.S. county has 50+ separate water systems. County-level analysis is too coarse. We obtained service territory maps letting us link each water system to specific areas it serves.
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David Molitor @davidmolitor.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
2/ We study 9,200 federal loans to drinking water systems through the Safe Drinking Water Act, worth $36 billion. These loans fund treatment plants, pipes, storage—capital investments to reduce pollution. Key question: Do they actually improve health?
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David Molitor @davidmolitor.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Does cleaning up drinking water save lives? New paper: We link US federal drinking water investments to Medicare records and find they reduce mortality among older Americans, with benefit/cost ratio>20. Thread on what we did... w/ Keiser, @bhashmazumder.bsky.social , @joseph-s-shapiro.bsky.social
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