The question of how access to services affects health outcomes is critical for policy makers allocating resources across different programs, but it is difficult to answer with cross-sectional data sets. The authors use data from a panel survey in Indonesia (the Indonesia Family Life Survey) that...

Grandparent caregiving has received increased attention in recent years, and grandparent-grandchild families have generated several public policy concerns, including whether grandparent-led families face barriers to obtaining public assistance. The authors address this question by comparing the...

The Displaced New Orleans Residents Pilot Study examined the current location, well-being, and plans of people who lived in the city of New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29, 2005. The study used a representative sample of pre-Katrina dwellings in the city. Fieldwork focused on...

Most elderly parents in Indonesia coreside with their adult children. However, preliminary studies provide some evidence that casts doubt on the presumed relationship between coresidence and receipt of support (Frankenberg et al. 1999; Cameron 2000). This paper uses qualitative case studies of...

The authors present a generalized solution to Grossman's model of health capital (1972), relaxing the widely used assumption that individuals can adjust their health stock instantaneously to an "optimal" level without adjustment costs. The Grossman model then predicts the existence of a health...

Recall bias is a pervasive problem in the analysis of retrospective data (Shyrock et al., 1973; Ewbank, 1981). The problem is a recurrent concernin the litterature on the determinants of breastfeeding duration, its trend over time, and the effect of breastfeeding on infant mortality.

Using data from the New Haven EPESE, we examine the relationship between family structure and the risk of first nursing home admission.

To analyze the effect of health on work, many studies use a simple self-assessed health measure based upon a question such as "do you have an impairment or health problem limiting the kind or amount of work you can do?" A possible drawback of such a measure is the possibility that different...

Understanding of the substantial disparity in health between low and high socioeconomic status (SES) groups is hampered by the lack of a sufficiently comprehensive theoretical framework to interpret empirical facts and to predict yet untested relations. The authors present a life-cycle model...

Some studies suggest that people can maintain their cognitive abilities through "mental exercise." This has not been unequivocally proven. Retirement is associated with a large change in a person's daily routine and environment. In this paper, the authors propose two mechanisms how retirement...