Using individual-level on males data from the 1988-1991 National Health Interview Survey Multiple Cause of Death Files, we examine the impact of relative deprivation within a reference group on health. We use measures of relative deprivation based on Yitzhaki’s index and define reference...

Using individual-level on males data from the 1988-1991 National Health Interview Survey Multiple Cause of Death Files, we examine the impact of relative deprivation within a reference group on health. We use measures of relative deprivation based on Yitzhaki’s index and define reference...

Low population density in rural developing country coupled with deficient infrastructure, weak state capacity and limited budgets makes increasing health care coverage difficult.Contracting-out mobile medical teams can be an adequate solution in this context. This paper examines the impact of a...

This paper estimates the impact of a large-scale contracting-out program in Guatemala, using two waves of living standard measurement surveys which collected data before and after the expansion of the program and exploiting variation in the timing of the program to estimate treatment effects....

We document a within-month mortality cycle where deaths decline before the first day of the month and spike after the first. This cycle is present across a wide variety of causes and demographic groups. A similar cycle exists for a range of economic activities, suggesting the mortality cycle may...

We exploit increases in postpartum length of stay generated by legislative changes in the late 1990s to identify the impact of greater hospital care on the health of newborns. Using all births in California over the 1995–2000 period, two-stage least-square estimates show that increased...

In recent years workplace smoking policies have become increasingly prevalent and restrictive. Using data from two large-scale national surveys, we investigate whether these policies reduce smoking. Our estimates suggest that workplace bans reduce smoking prevalence by 5 percentage points and...

Using an interrupted time series design and a census of births in California over a 6-year period, we show that state and federal laws passed in the late 1990s designed to increase the length of postpartum hospital stays reduced considerably the fraction of newborns that were discharged early....