In 1975, 50 year-old Americans could expect to live slightly longer than their European counterparts. By 2005, American life expectancy at that age has diverged substantially compared to Europe. We find that this growing longevity gap is primarily the symptom of real declines in the health of...

The use of self assessed health status as a measure of health is common in empirical research. We analyse a unique Australian survey in which a random sub-sample of respondents answer a standard self assessed health question twice -- before and after an additional set of health related...

It is well accepted that education is positively related to health. However, there is considerably less agreement as to the explanation of this relationship. I examine the strength of the empirical relationship between education and health for Australia and Canada. I find that education is...

The existence of a healthy immigrant effect – where immigrants are on average healthier than the native-born – is now a well accepted phenomenon. There are many competing explanations for this phenomenon including health screening by recipient countries, healthy behaviour prior to migration...