We seek to explain why countries have adopted national Old-Age Insurance and Health Insurance programs. Theoretical … relate the probability of a country’s creating social insurance to proxies for each of these theories. We find weak evidence …, none of the theories is very strongly related to system adoption. We conclude that social insurance can be politically …

deterioration of the health care system, changes in diet and obesity, and material deprivation fail to explain the increase in …

deterioration of the health care system, changes in diet and obesity, and material deprivation fail to explain the increase in …

This series from the NBER presents new research by leading economists on current health care policy issues. The papers … in this seventh volume, originally presented at the annual Frontiers in Health Policy Research conference held in … Washington D.C. in the summer of 2003, reflect the economic challenges faced by policymakers and health care professionals in an …

deterioration of the health care system, changes in diet and obesity, and material deprivation fail to explain the increase in …

health care, has better health outcomes. It has long been clear that mortality as a whole is not better in the US than in … other countries. We focus our analysis on the US performance for the treatment of non-fatal health outcomes and we compare … the health of the United States to that of Canada, the United Kingdom and Spain. Our results indicate a discrepancy …