Rapid urbanization could have positive and negative health effects, such that the net impact on population health is … China’s unprecedented urbanization. We construct an index of urbanicity from a broad set of community characteristics and … define urbanization in terms of movements across the distribution of this index. We use difference-in-differences estimators …

urbanization occurs sooner in places with higher agricultural potential and comparatively lower transport costs, using worldwide … thresholds of urbanization. Controlling for unobserved heterogeneity across countries through fixed effects and using a variety … of spatial econometric techniques, we find a robust association between earlier urbanization and agro …