Table 8.

Placebo test: effect of 1916 polio notification rate per 1000 on educational attainment of age cohorts

	(1)	(2)	(3)
	Years of education in 1940
Polio * Age 22–24 in 1916	− 0.023	− 0.071	$-0.{102}^{\ast }$
	(0.037)	(0.048)	(0.052)
Polio * Age 25–29 in 1916	0.030	− 0.073	− 0.052
	(0.048)	(0.116)	(0.062)
Polio * Age 30–33 in 1916	0.090	− 0.081	0.090
	(0.084)	(0.218)	(0.097)
Birth year cohort FE	Yes	Yes	Yes
State 1940 FE	Yes	Yes	Yes
Birth state FE	Yes	Yes	Yes
Birth state Trend	No	Yes	No
1916 Economic controls	No	No	Yes
Reference cohort	Age 18–21	Age 18–21	Age 18–21
N	84,462	84,462	84,462
Adj $R^2$	0.063	0.063	0.063

Results reported are for white males. Years of education are top coded at 17 years. Age cohorts interacted with polio correspond to birth years 1892/1894, 1887/1891 and 1883/1886. The reference birth cohort is 1895/1898. Standard errors are clustered by state of birth and are in parentheses. All specifications include state of birth fixed effects, fixed effects for state of residence in 1940, and birth year FE. 1916 Economic Controls are controls interacted with age cohort dummies. These variables include 1916 state level doctors per capita, education expenditures per capita, log manufacturing wages per earner, and log population. Due to lack of data for the 19th century we did not assign schooling laws to placebo cohorts.

${}^{\ast }$ $p<0.10$, ${}^{\ast \ast }$ $p<0.05$, ${}^{\ast \ast \ast }$ $p<0.01$