We evaluate the costs and benefits of increased medical spending for low birth weight infants. Lifetime spending on low birth weight babies increased by roughly $40,000 per birth between 1950 and 1990. The health improvements resulting from this have been substantial. Infant mortality rates fell...

In the last two decades, Medicare spending has doubled in real terms despite the fact that the health of Medicare beneficiaries improved over this period. The goals of this paper are to document how trends in spending by age have changed among elderly Medicare beneficiaries in the last decade...

Using annual cross-sectional data on over 100,000 adolescents aged 12-17, we studied academic and behavioral outcomes among those who were and were not likely affected by FDA warnings regarding the safety of antidepressants. Just before the FDA warnings, adolescents with probable depression had...

The long-standing inverse relationship between education and mortality strengthened substantially later in the 20th century. This paper examines the reasons for this increase. We show that behavioral risk factors are not of primary importance. Smoking has declined more for the better educated,...

In this paper, we examine the growth in medical care spending by age over the past 40 years. We show that between 1953 and 1987, medical spending increased disproportionately for infants, those under 1 year, and the elderly, those 65 and older. Annual spending growth for infants was 9.8 percent...

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act imposed work requirements on welfare recipients. Using 1999-2001 data from Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, we compared the labor market and welfare experience of women with four employment barriers: poor mental health,...

Mortality has declined continuously in the United States over the course of the 20th century, and at relatively constant rates. But the constancy of mortality reductions masks significant heterogeneity by age, cause, and source. Using historical data on death by age and cause, this paper...

There are striking disparities in morbidity and mortality by socioeconomic status (SES) within the United States. I examine pregnancy and health at birth to investigate possible mechanisms linking SES and health. I find that a limited set of maternal health habits during pregnancy, particularly...

The Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between the major tobacco companies and 46 states created an abrupt 45 cent (21%) increase in cigarette prices in November, 1998. Earlier estimates of the elasticity of prenatal smoking implied that the price rise would reduce prenatal cigarette smoking by...

We compare and contrast the labor market and distributional impact of three common approaches to state and federal health insurance expansion: public insurance expansions, refundable tax credits for low income people, and employer and individual mandates. We draw on existing estimates from the...