Equally educated people are healthier if they live in more educated places. Every 10 percent point increase in an area's share of adults with a college degree is associated with a decline in all-cause mortality by 7%, controlling for individual education, demographics, and area characteristics....

This paper reviews the evidence on the well-known positive association between socioeconomic status and health. We focus on four dimensions of socioeconomic status -- education, financial resources, rank, and race and ethnicity -- paying particular attention to how the mechanisms linking health...

Opioid overdose death rates in the United States have risen continuously for over three decades, increasing 2,142 percent in total from 1990 to 2020. This is surprising. One might expect drug epidemics to be self-limiting, as policy and individual behavior reacts to observed deaths. We study why...

This paper uses decennial Census data to examine trends in immigrant segregation in the United States between 1910 and 2000. Immigrant segregation declined in the first half of the century, but has been rising over the past few decades. Analysis of restricted access 1990 Census microdata...

There is a large and persistent association between education and health. In this paper, we review what is known about this link. We first document the facts about the relationship between education and health. The education 'gradient' is found for both health behaviors and health status, though...

Reports of pain differ markedly across socioeconomic groups and are correlated with outcomes such as functional limitations and disability insurance receipt. This paper examines the differential experience of pain by education. We focus on knee pain, the most common musculoskeletal complaint....

We study the impact of economic crisis on health in Mexico. There have been four wide-scale economic crises in Mexico in the past two decades, the most recent in 1995-96. We find that mortality rates for the very young and the elderly increase or decline less rapidly in crisis years as compared...

In the past few decades, some measures of population risk have improved, while others have deteriorated. Understanding the health of the population requires integrating these different trends. We compare the risk factor profile of the population in the early 1970s with that of the population in...

Mortality rates have fallen dramatically over time, starting in a few countries in the 18th century, and continuing to fall today. In just the past century, life expectancy has increased by over 30 years. At the same time, mortality rates remain much higher in poor countries, with a difference...