Using data from late 19th and early 20th century US prisons, this study considers how black and mulatto basal metabolic rates and calories varied with economic development. During the 19th century, black physical activity and net nutrition declined during the late 19th and early 20th centuries...

Using data from late 19th and early 20th century US prisons, this study estimates the basal metabolic rates and calories for Americans of European descent. Throughout the 19th century, white basal metabolic rates (BMRs) and calories declined across their respective distributions, and much of the...

This research explores the persistent effect of the Neolithic Revolution on the evolution of life expectancy in the course of human history. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the onset of the Neolithic Revolution and the associated rise in infectious diseases triggered...

This paper studies the origins and function of customs aimed at restricting women's sexuality, such as a particularly invasive form of female genital cutting, restrictions on women's freedom of mobility, and norms about their sexual behavior. The analysis tests the anthropological theory that a...

This paper empirically investigates the long-run effects of major health improvements on income growth in the United States. To isolate exogenous changes in health, the econometric model uses quasi-experimental variation in cardiovascular disease mortality across states over time. The results...

We measure to cost of extreme weather events (droughts and floods) on health care in Sri Lanka. We find that frequently occurring local floods and droughts impose a significant risk to health when individuals are exposed directly to these hazards, and when their communities are exposed, even if...

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between globalization, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases, and associated deaths in more than 100 countries. Our ordinary least squares multivariate regressions show that countries with higher levels of socio-economic globalization...

We empirically analyze the effect of UN and US economic sanctions on life expectancy and its gender gap in target countries. Our sample covers 98 less developed and newly industrialized countries over the period 1977-2012. We employ a matching approach to account for the endogeneity of...

We investigate whether and to what extent Chinese development finance affects infant mortality, combining 92 demographic and health surveys (DHS) for a maximum of 53 countries and almost 55,000 sub-national locations over the 2002-2014 period. We address causality by instrumenting aid with a set...

Medical expenditure risk can pose a major threat to living standards. We derive decomposable measures of catastrophic medical expenditure risk from reference-dependent utility with loss aversion. We propose a quantile regression based method of estimating risk exposure from cross-section data...