"This paper tests whether income affects the body weight and clinical weight classification of elderly Americans using a natural experiment that led otherwise identical retirees to receive significantly different Social Security payments based on their year of birth. We exploit this natural...

Obesity is significantly more prevalent among non-Hispanic African-American (henceforth "black") women than among non]Hispanic white American (henceforth gwhiteh) women. These differences have persisted without much alteration since the early 1970s, despite substantial increases in the rates of...