Theory suggests that adverse life events--such as unemployment or health shocks--can result in food insecurity, which has increased substantially in the U.S. over the past decade alongside the obesity epidemic. We test this proposition by estimating the effects of a specific and salient mental...

We develop a theory of rational self-medication. The idea is that forward-looking individuals, lacking access to better treatment options, attempt to manage the symptoms of mental and physical pain outside of formal medical care. They use substances that relieve symptoms in the short run but...

While the contemporaneous association between mental health problems and criminal behavior has been explored in the literature, the long-term consequences of such problems, depression in particular, have received much less attention. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent...

This study examines the past year relationship between GPA and experiencing a combination of two primary depression symptoms, feeling sad and losing interest in usual activities for at least two consecutive weeks, among high school students during 2001-2009. The GPA loss associated with sadness,...

There is suggestive evidence that rates of major depression have risen markedly in the U.S. concurrent with the rise in obesity. The economic burden of depression, about $100 billion annually, is under-estimated if depression has a positive causal impact on obesity. If depression plays a causal...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a “second pandemic” of anxiety and depression. While vaccines are primarily aimed at reducing COVID-19 transmission and mortality risks, they may have important secondary benefits. We use data from U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey merged to...

During the New Deal the Roosevelt Administration dramatically expanded relief spending to combat extraordinarily high rates of unemployment. We examine the dynamic relationships between relief spending and local private labor markets using a new panel data set of monthly relief, private...

A key question in the design of public assistance to the needy is how allocation of responsibility for funding and decision-making across different levels of government influences the level and type of assistance provided. The New Deal era was a period in which this allocation changed...

The New Deal during the 1930s was arguably the largest peace-time expansion in federal government activity in American history. Until recently there had been very little quantitative testing of the microeconomic impact of the wide variety of New Deal programs. Over the past decade scholars have...

During the 1930s the federal government embarked upon an ambitious series of grant programs designed to counteract the Great Depression. The amounts distributed varied widely across the country and potentially contributed to population shifts. We estimate an aggregate discrete choice model, in...