Chay, Guryan and Mazumder (2009) found substantial racial convergence in AFQT and NAEP scores across cohorts born in the 1960's and early 1970's that was concentrated among blacks in the South. We demonstrated a close tracking between variation in the test score convergence across states and...

Regression results from a 30-year panel of the state-level data indicate that changes in alcohol-excise taxes cause a reduction in drinking and lower all-cause mortality in the short run. But those results do not fully capture the long-term mortality effects of a permanent change in drinking...

To American and European economists in 1945, the countries of Asia were unpromising candidates for high economic growth. In 1950 even the most prosperous of these countries had a per capita income less than 25 percent of that of the United States. Between the mid-1960s and the end of the...

On January 1, 1991, the federal excise tax on beer doubled, and the tax rates on wine and liquor increased as well. These changes are larger than the typical state-level changes that have been used to study the effect of price on alcohol abuse and its consequences. In this paper, we develop a...

Birth weight has emerged as the leading indicator of infant health and welfare and the central focus of infant health policy. This is because low birth weight (LBW) infants experience severe health and developmental difficulties that can impose enormous costs on society. But would the prevention...

We examine the effects of total suspended particulates (TSPs) air pollution on infant health using the air quality improvements induced by the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA). This legislation imposed strict regulations on industrial polluters in nonattainment' counties with TSPs...

Over the past three centuries there has been a rapid accumulation of physiological capital in OECD countries. Enhanced physiological capital is tied to long-term reduction in environmental hazards and to the conquest of chronic malnutrition. Data on heights and birth weights suggests that...

This paper presents an exploratory analysis using NLSY97 data of the relationship between the likelihood of school continuation and the choices of whether to smoke or drink. We demonstrate that in the United States as of the late 1990s, smoking in 11th grade was a uniquely powerful predictor of...

One way to demonstrate how remarkable changes in the process of aging have been is to compare health over the life cycles of 3 cohorts. For the first cohort, born between 1835 and 1845 (the Civil War cohort), life was short and disabilities were common even at young ages. Other factors...

Drinkers earn more than non-drinkers, even after controlling for human capital and local labor market conditions. Several mechanisms by which drinking could increase productivity have been proposed but are unconfirmed; the more obvious mechanisms predict the opposite, that drinking can impair...