Health constitutes a fundamental aspect of our well-being. It is also a key factor in determining our contribution to market and non-market output. Health inequality refers to the unequal realization of health outcomes between different groups in the population. Systematic disparities in health...

This paper uses microdata from Brazilian vital statistics natality and mortality data between 2000 and 2010 to estimate the impact of in-utero exposure to local violence -measured by homicide rates- on birth outcomes. Focusing on small communities, where it is more plausible that local homicide...

The current coronavirus pandemic is an unprecedented public health challenge that has devastating economic impacts for households. Using a sample of 230,540 respondents to online surveys in 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, we show that the economic impacts are large and unequal:...

This paper attempts to identify the climatic effect on birth outcomes in Brazil and, thus, to predict the potential impact of climate change. Panel data models indicate that excess and lack of rainfall have the most important harmful effects on newborns' health; temperature stresses and low...

The goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to achieve nearly universal health insurance coverage through a combination of mandates, subsidies, marketplaces, and Medicaid expansions, most of which took effect in 2014. We use data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to examine...

The first major insurance expansion of the Affordable Care Act – a provision requiring insurers to allow dependents to remain on parents’ health insurance until turning 26 – took effect in September 2010. We estimate this mandate’s impacts on numerous health-related outcomes using a...

One of the consequences of rapid economic growth and industrialization in the developing world has been deterioration in environmental conditions and air quality. While air pollution is a serious threat to health in most developing countries, environmental regulations are rare and the...

This article investigates how the Swedish population values a reduction in the number of suicides in relation to other life-saving interventions within the health care sector. An online discrete choice experiment was conducted with a sample of 1000 Swedish members of the web panel Userneeds to...

We study the effect of media coverage on individual behaviour during a public health crisis. For this purpose, we collect a unique dataset of 200,000 newspaper articles about the Covid-19 pandemic from Sweden - one of the few countries that did not impose mandatory lockdowns or curfews. We show...