We study the effect of unemployment on birth outcomes by exploiting geographical variation in the unemployment rate across local areas in England, and comparing siblings born to the same mother via family fixed effects. Using rich individual data from hospital administrative records between 2003...

We provide a framework to disentangle preferences and beliefs in health behavior and apply it to lockdown compliance in the UK. We estimate a model of compliance choice with uncertain costs and benefits to quantify utility tradeoffs, decompose group differences in compliance, and compute...

Newborn health is an important component in the chain of intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. This paper contributes to the literature on the determinants of health at birth in two ways. First, we analyze the role of maternal endowments and investments (education and smoking in...

We examine Trevon Logan's 2009 claim to have found low levels of nutrition among British worker's households in the late 19th century. Using the same data, we conclude that Logan's estimates are thirty percent too low. Logan buttressed his estimates by claiming that the income elasticity of...

Individuals suffering from mental health problems are often severely limited in their social and economic functioning. Mental health problems can develop early in life, are frequently chronic in nature, and have an established hereditary component. The extent to which mental illness runs in...

In this paper we argue that the fertility decline that began around 1880 had substantial positive effects on the health of children, as the quality-quantity trade-off would suggest. We use microdata from a unique survey from 1930s Britain to analyze the relationship between the standardized...

Common mental health problems impose significant costs on individuals and societies, yet healthcare systems often overlook them. We provide the first causal evidence on the effectiveness of a pioneering, nationwide mental health service for treating depression and anxiety disorders in England...

In this paper we explore the impact of birth weight on children's cognitive and behavioural outcomes using data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. In order to deal with the endogeneity of birth weight we use an estimator based on the eliminant method. When coupled with ordinary least squares,...

The first half of the twentieth century saw rapid improvements in the health and height of British children. Average height and health can be related to infant mortality through a positive selection effect and a negative scarring effect. Examining town-level panel data on the heights of school...

In this paper we look at the relationship between health and income as mediated by "lifestyle" choices; that is, a set of behaviours which are thought to influence health and are generally considered to invoke a substantial degree of free choice. The main underlying assumption is that...