Longitudinal studies support the proposition that the extent and severity of chronic conditions in middle and late ages are to a large extent the outcome of environmental insults at early ages, including in utero. Data from the Early Indicators program project undertaken at the Center for...

This paper sketches a theory of the secular decline in morbidity and mortality that takes account of changes in human physiology since 1700. The synergism between technological and physiological improvements has produced a form of human evolution, much more rapid than natural selection, which is...

While the economies of the fifteen countries that were in the European Union (EU15) in 2000 will continue to grow from now until 2040, they will not be able to match the surges in growth that will occur in South and East Asia. In 2040, the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion, or nearly...

This paper is an extensive revision and expansion of Working Paper No.1402. It centers on a new time series of life expectations in the U.S. since 1720, which has been constructed from the NBER/CPE pilot sample of genealogies. Native-born Americans achieved remarkably long life expectations...

In 2002, the Chinese Communist Party announced a goal of quadrupling per capita income by the year 2020. Starting at income levels of the year 2000, this would require a growth rate of 7.2 percent per annum in per capita income or close to 8.0 percent in GDP. Such unresolved and emerging...

This paper argues that the secular decline in mortality, which began during the eighteenth century, is still in progress and will probably continue for another century or more. The evolutionary perspective presented in this paper focuses not only on the environment, which from the standpoint of...

At the close of World War II, the future of economic development was the subject of wide-ranging debates. Historical experience has since shown that these forecasts were uniformly too pessimistic. Expectations for the American economy focused on the likelihood of secular stagnation, which...

One way to demonstrate how remarkable changes in the process of aging have been is to compare health over the life cycles of 3 cohorts. For the first cohort, born between 1835 and 1845 (the Civil War cohort), life was short and disabilities were common even at young ages. Other factors...

One of the most important debates among health economists in rich nations is whether advances in biotechnology will spare their health care systems from a financial crisis. We must consider that prevalence rates of chronic diseases declined during the twentieth century and that this rate of...