The apogee of anti-smoking legislation in North America was reached early in the last century. In 1903, the Canadian Parliament passed a resolution prohibiting the manufacture, importation, and sale of cigarettes. Around the same time, fifteen states in the United States banned the sale of...

We present evidence showing that the course of economic growth and of health, as measured by stature, Body Mass Index (BMI), mortality rates, or the prevalence of chronic conditions, diverged in the nineteenth century and converged in the twentieth. To analyze the change in welfare resulting...

Explanations for the decline in labor force participation rates of older men prior to 1950 have focused on the sectoral shift from agriculture to manufacturing. Labor force participation rates of men living in farm households have been consistently higher than those of men living in non-farm...

I investigate why workers' probability of leaving unemployment has fallen since 1900 by estimating the impact of a large government transfer, the first major pension program in the United States, covering Union Army veterans of the Civil War. The pension, because of the program's rules, was a...