We examine the importance of geographical proximity to coal as a factor underpinning comparative European economic development during the Industrial Revolution. Our analysis exploits geographical variation in city and coalfield locations, alongside temporal variation in the availability of...

In this paper, we investigate the issue of partner selection in the health of individuals who are at least fifty years old in England and the United States. We find a strong and positive association in family background variables including education of partners and their parents. Adult health...

The objective of this paper is to describe and understand the determinants of changes in the number and quality of new legal immigrants to the United States over the last 25 years. Our main interest is in understanding the behavioral response of potential immigrants to changes in the U.S....

Smith uses the HRS and AHEAD panels to examine the consequences of new health on a series of SES related outcomes- out-of-pocket labor supply, labor force activity, household income and wealth. For each of these outcomes, new severe health events have a significant effect although most of the...

Many western industrialized countries face strong budgetary pressures due to the aging of the baby boom generations and the general trends toward earlier ages of retirement. We use the American PSID and the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) to explain differences in prevalence and...

New medical technologies hold tremendous promise for improving population health, but they also raise concerns about exacerbating already large differences in health by socioeconomic status (SES). If effective treatments are more rapidly adopted by the better educated, SES health disparities may...

This paper investigates the salient diabetes prevalence patterns across key SES indicators, and how they changed over time. The investigation spans both the conventional concept of diagnosed diabetes and a more comprehensive measure including those whose diabetes is undiagnosed. By doing so, I...

According to the life-cycle model, mortality risk will influence both retirement and the desire to annuitize wealth. We estimate the effect of subjective survival probabilities on retirement and on the claiming of Social Security benefits because delayed claiming is equivalent to the purchase of...

The household production model provides a useful theoretical framework in which one may analyze family labor supply issues. In this model, the family is viewed as if it were a small firm producing its ultimate wants within the household. In order to satisfy these wants, the family (firm)...

In this paper, we modeled several types of housing transitions of the elderly in two countries -- Britain and the United States. One important form of these transitions involves downsizing of housing consumption, the importance of which among older households is still debated. This downsizing...