We explore the effects of a child labor regulation that changed the legal working age from 14 to 16 over the health of their offspring. We show that the reform was detrimental for the health of the son's of affected parents at delivery. Yet, in the medium run, the effects of the reform are...

We propose a model of aging and health deficit accumulation model with an infinite time horizon and a steady state of constant health. The time of death is uncertain and endogenous to lifestyle and health behavior. This setup can be conceptualized as a strive for immortality that is never...

There has been substantial public policy concern over the relatively low rates of health insurance coverage among the self-employed in the United States. We use data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey conducted in 1996 to analyze how the self-employed and wage-earners differ both with...

When traditional measures for economic welfare are scarce or unreliable, stature and the body mass index (BMI) are now widely-accepted measures that reflect economic conditions. However, little work exists for late 19th and early 20th century women's BMIs in the US and how they varied with...

The objective of this paper is to estimate the effect of diabetes on labor market exit using longitudinal data from the 1992-2010 Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We estimate a discrete time hazard model to test whether diabetes affects the hazard of leaving employment among individuals who...

This paper studies a problem of non linear taxation when individuals have different longevities resulting from a non-monetary effort (like exercising). We first present the laissez-faire and the first best. Like Becker and Philipson (1998), we find that the laissez-faire level of effort is too...

Using data from the Health Survey for England and the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing, we estimate the causal effect of schooling on health. Identification comes from two nation wide increases in British compulsory school leaving age in 1947 and 1973, respectively. Our study complements...

We use longitudinal, disease-level data to analyze the impact of pharmaceutical innovation on longevity and medical expenditure in Sweden, where mean age at death increased by 1.88 years during the period 1997-2010. Pharmaceutical innovation is estimated to have increased mean age at death by...

Education yields substantial non-monetary benefits, but the size of these gains is still debated. Previous studies, for example, report contradictory effects of education and compulsory schooling on mortality - ranging from zero to large mortality reductions. Using data from 19 compulsory...

Our societies are witnessing a steady increase in longevity. This demographic evolution is accompanied by some convergence across countries, whereas substantial longevity inequalities persist within nations. The goal of this paper is to survey some crucial implications of changing longevity on...