GOOD HEALTH IS A CRUCIAL PART OF WELL-BEING BUT SPENDING ON HEALTH CAN BE JUSTIFIED ON ECONOMIC GROUNDS. THE GOAL OF REDUCING POVERTY PROVIDES A DIFFERENT BUT EQUALLY POWERFUL CASE FOR HEALTH INVESTMENTS. HOWEVER, IF POLICYMAKERS ARE TO ACCELERATE THE SUBSTANTIAL HEALTH GAINS OF RECENT DECADES,...

Good health is a crucial part of well-being but spending on health can be justified on economic grounds. The goal of reducing poverty provides a different but equally powerful case for health investments. However, if policymakers are to accelerate the substantial health gains of recent decades,...

Attending college seems to be a profitable and affordable investment in the US. Nevertheless, a number of academically talented young people still hesitate to attend college. This puzzle motivates this paper to test for whether college education is a risky investment. To measure the riskiness of...

Using the rich data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we show that several dimensions of college quality have positive impacts on young women's wages. We find evidence of ability sorting, but controlling for ability, women who attend higher quality colleges earn higher wages. Women...

Using the rich data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we show that several dimensions of college quality have substantial positive impacts on young men's wages. This finding is robust to a wide array of alternative specifications. Controlling for ability reveals that sorting of...

Local financing of public schools in the U.S. leads to a bundling of two distinct choices - residential choice and school choice - and increases the degree of socioeconomic segregation across school districts. A school finance reform can go a long way in weakening this link. In this paper I...

Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are subsidized savings accounts. Unlike other subsidized savings accounts such as Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) or 401(k) plans, IDAs are targeted to the poor, provide subsidies through matches rather than through tax breaks, and require...

Loss of a parent is one of the most traumatic events a child can face. If loss of a parent reduces investments in children, it can also have long-lasting implications. This study uses parametric and semi-nonparametric matching techniques to estimate how one human capital investment, school...

The impact of ethnic diversity on the provision of local public goods and collective action in Africa remains largely unexplored. To address this gap, this paper explores the relationship between ethnic diversity and local primary school funding in rural western Kenya. The econometric...

Using Finnish panel data, we study how entrepreneurs differ from workers in education and income dynamics. We find that workers have higher median income in all educational groups. Without additional controls, entrepreneurs have higher average income with all but undergraduate level of...