This study investigates whether minimum wage increases in the United States affect an important non-market outcome: worker health. To study this question, we use data on lesser-skilled workers from the 1993-2014 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Surveys coupled with differences-in-differences...

We examine how substance use disorder (SUD) treatment providers respond to private health insurance expansions induced by state equal coverage ('parity') laws for SUD treatment. We use data on the near universe of specialty SUD treatment providers in the United States between 1997 and 2010 in an...

This analysis uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to assess the effect of ageing and health on the life satisfaction of the oldest old (defined as 75 and older). We observe a U-shaped relationship between age...

Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky...

This paper examines the determinants of the health of children ages 6 to 19, as reported in the Child Development Supplements (CDS) to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The primary focus is on the effect of religion on the reported overall health and psychological health of the child....

Contrary to conventional wisdom, NHANES data indicate that the poor have never had a statistically significant higher prevalence of overweight status at any time in the last 35 years. Despite this empirical evidence, the view that the poor are less healthy in terms of excess accumulation of fat...

Primary healthcare institutions (PHIs) in China have experienced a sizable decline in medical services in recent years. Despite the large regional disparities in China, there is a lack of evidence on the differential patterns of medical services offered by PHIs, especially from a spatial...

This study explores whether hospitals with higher increases in obesity levels have higher CS rates and the consequential effects on maternal and newborn health in Mexico for 2008-2015. It models how changes in the obesity level of hospitals' patient pools may affect the quantity and quality of...

How do patient and provider incentives affect the provision of long-term care? Our analysis of 551 thousand nursing home stays yields three main insights. First, Medicaid-covered residents prolong their stays instead of transitioning to community-based care due to limited cost-sharing. Second,...

We measure one aspect of how access to emergency care through ambulance services changes for patients when a hospital closes. We empirically estimate the time needed to transport a patient to an emergency department in an ambulance in the period immediately after the hospital closes. We find...