The current coronavirus pandemic is an unprecedented public health challenge that has devastating economic impacts for households. Using a sample of 230,540 respondents to online surveys in 17 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, we show that the economic impacts are large and unequal:...

This paper reviews the effectiveness and efficiency of key policy instruments for MDG (Millennium Development Goals) achievement. We first demonstrate that average MDG progress is likely to be too slow to meet the education and health sector targets in a number of developing countries. We also...

This paper exploits a new source of variation in Head Start funding to identify the program's effects on health and schooling. In 1965 the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) provided technical assistance to the 300 poorest counties to develop Head Start proposals. The result was a large and...

This paper exploits a new source of variation in Head Start funding to identify the program's effects on health and schooling. In 1965 the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) provided technical assistance to the 300 poorest counties to develop Head Start proposals. The result was a large and...

This paper assesses the effects of different health conditions on happiness. Based on a large data set for Latin America, the effects of different conditions are examined across age, gender, and income cohorts. Anxiety and pain have stronger effects than physical problems, likely because people...

In 2007, the state of Andhra Pradesh in southern India began rolling out the Aarogyasri health insurance to reduce catastrophic health expenditures in households “below the poverty line.” We exploit variation in program roll-out over time and districts to evaluate the impacts of the scheme...

We quantify the effects of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) using a stochastic general equilibrium overlapping generations model with endogenous health capital accumulation calibrated to match U.S. data on health spending and insurance take-up rates. We find that the introduction of an insurance...

Although a substantial literature examines the relationship between culture and health in myriad individual contexts, a lack of comparative data across settings has resulted in disparate and imprecise conceptualizations of the concept for scholars and practitioners alike. This article examines...

Access to evidence-based supported employment (SE) services for persons with serious mental illness is limited in the U.S., despite evidence such services are effective and could benefit more persons. Major barriers to SE expansion are overlapping and limited funding streams, and interagency...

We study the effect of public insurance for children on their utilization of medical care and health outcomes by exploiting recent expansions of the Medicaid program to low-income U.S. children. These expansions doubled the fraction of children eligible for Medicaid between 1984 and 1992....