This paper examines the effect of Brazil's Family Health Program (Programa Saude da Familia, FHP) on cognitive skills of fifth-grade students. We use biennial data from national exams between 2007 and 2015, and variation in the FHP implementation date across municipalities, birth cohort, and...

Individuals should be entitled to a "fair innings", and the primary role of health systems should be the prevention of premature mortality. In India, 66 percent of all deaths are premature. The burden of premature mortality has shifted from child (0-5 years) to adult (30-69 years) level over the...

The 21st century has been a period of rising inequality in both income and health. In this study, we find that geographic inequality in mortality for midlife Americans increased by about 70 percent from 1992 to 2016. This was not simply because states such as New York or California benefited...

We develop a novel approach integrating epidemiological and economic models that allows databased simulations during a pandemic. We examine the economically optimal opening strategy that can be reconciled with the containment of a pandemic. The empirical evidence is based on data from Germany...

This is a rejoinder to a comment written by Cutler and Miller on our recent paper, "Public Health Efforts and the Decline in Urban Mortality" (IZA DP No. 11773), which reanalyzes data used by Cutler and Miller to investigate the determinants of the urban mortality decline from 1900 to 1936. Two...

Using data on 25 major American cities for the period 1900-1940, we explore the effects of municipal-level public health efforts that were viewed as critical in the fight against food- and water-borne diseases. In addition to studying interventions such as treating sewage and setting strict...

Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading cause of death worldwide according to the WHO. This paper estimates the effect of TB dispensaries, designed to prevent the spread of the disease before the advent of modern medicine. Our difference-in-differences estimation reveals that the roll-out of the TB...

We discuss and review literature on the macroeconomic effects of epidemics and pandemics since the late 20th century. First, we cover the role of health in driving economic growth and well-being and discuss standard frameworks for assessing the economic burden of infectious diseases. Second, we...

We develop a novel approach integrating epidemiological and economic models that allows databased simulations during a pandemic. We examine the economically optimal opening strategy that can be reconciled with the containment of a pandemic. The empirical evidence is based on data from Germany...

This paper studies the immediate and long-run mortality effects of the first community-based health intervention in the world, which had a particular focus on controlling tuberculosis - the so-called Framingham Health and Tuberculosis Demonstration. Comparing death and TB-mortality rates between...