We employ data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to investigate income to health causality. To account for unobserved heterogeneity, we focus on the relationship between earnings growth and changes in self-reported health status. Causal claims are predicated upon appropriate moment...

Studies of intergenerational mobility have largely ignored health despite the central importance of health to welfare. We present the first estimates of intergenerational health mobility in the US by using repeated measures of self-reported health status (SRH) during adulthood from the PSID. Our...

We investigate the evolution of health over the life-cycle. We allow for two sources of persistence: unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence. Estimation indicates that there is a large degree of heterogeneity. For half the population, there are modest degrees of state dependence...

Social scientists have long documented that many components of socioeconomic status such as income and education have strong ties across generations. However, health status, arguably a more critical component of welfare, has largely been ignored. We fill this void by providing the first...

We estimate the impact of the Great Recession of 2007-2009 on health outcomes in the United States. We show that a one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate resulted in a 7.8-8.8 percent increase in reports of poor health. Mental health was also adversely impacted and reports of...

We investigate sibling correlations in health status using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and Bayesian methods that allow us to estimate the covariance structure of a system of latent variable equations. Across a battery of outcomes, we estimate that between 50% and 60% of health status can...

Studies of intergenerational mobility have largely ignored health despite the central importance of health to welfare. We present the first estimates of intergenerational health mobility in the US by using repeated measures of self-reported health status (SRH) during adulthood from the PSID. Our...