To assess age-specific infection fatality rates (IFRs) for COVID-19, we have conducted a systematic review of seroprevalence studies as well as countries with comprehensive tracing programs. Age-specific IFRs were computed using the prevalence data in conjunction with reported fatalities four...

In this paper, we investigate the impact of attending school on body weight and obesity. We use school starting age cutoff dates to compare weight outcomes for similar age children with different years of school exposure. As is the case with academic outcomes, school exposure is related to...

We study the effect of incorporating heterogeneity into default rules by examining the choice between retirement plans at a firm which transitioned from a defined benefit (DB) to a defined contribution (DC) plan. The default plan for existing employees varied discontinuously depending on their...

Individuals who are likely to realize the largest benefits from improvements in air quality often depend on other members of their households to make time or monetary contributions to their care. The presence of these dependency relationships among household members poses challenges for benefit...

Forty years ago, 96% of six-year-old children were enrolled in first grade or above. As of 2005, the figure was just 84%. The school attendance rate of six-year-olds has not decreased; rather, they are increasingly likely to be enrolled in kindergarten rather than first grade. This paper documents...

We estimate the effects of having more mature peers using data from an experiment where children of the same age were randomly assigned to different kindergarten classrooms. Exploiting this experimental variation in conjunction with variation in expected kindergarten entry age to account for...

The current practice of measuring age as years-since-birth, both in common practice and in the law, rather than alternative measures reflecting a person's stage in the lifecycle distorts important behavior such as retirement, saving, and the discussion of dependency ratios. Two alternative...

This paper examines retirement and related behavioral responses to policies that on average are actuarially neutral. Many conventional models predict that actuarially neutral policies will not affect retirement behavior. In contrast, our model allows those with high time preference rates to find...

Population aging is primarily the result of past declines in fertility, which produced a decades long period in which the ratio of dependents to working age adults was reduced. Rising old-age dependency in many countries represents the inevitable passing of this "demographic dividend." Societies...

Case, Lubotsky, and Paxson (2001) show that the well-known relationship between socio- economic status (SES) and health exists in childhood and grows more pronounced with age. However, in cross-sectional data it is difficult to distinguish between two possible explanations. The first is that...