The channels by which better health leads to higher income, and those by which higher income protects health status, are of interest to both researchers and policy makers. In general, quantifying the impact of income on health is difficult, given the simultaneous determination of health and...

We document the impact of the AIDS crisis on non-AIDS related health services in fourteen sub-Saharan African countries. Using multiple waves of Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for each country, we examine antenatal care, birth deliveries, and rates of immunization for children born between...

We examine the costs associated with funerals and the effects of funeral spending on household functioning, using data collected in the Agincourt Demographic Surveillance Site in South Africa. We find that large outlays of money at the time of the funeral leave households vulnerable to future...

A rich array of institutional diversity makes the United States an excellent place to study the relationship between political institutions and public policy outcomes. This Paper has three main aims. First, it reviews existing empirical evidence on the relationship between institutional rules,...

Research across a number of disciplines has highlighted the role of early life health and circumstance in determining health and economic outcomes at older ages. Nutrition in utero and in infancy may set the stage for the chronic disease burden that an individual will face in middle age....

Understanding whether the gradient in children's health becomes steeper with age is an important first step in uncovering the mechanisms that connect economic and health status, and in recommending sensible interventions to protect children's health. To that end, this paper examines why two sets...

Many economists, pressed to list the keys to economic development, would turn first to education. Beliefs of the primacy of education in the development process stem both from the fundamental role of education in income generation, and from the many other ways in which education is thought to...

We examine the impact of orphanhood on children’s school enrollment in10 Sub-Saharan African countries. Although poorer children in Africa are less likely to attend school, the lower enrollment of orphans is not accounted for solely by their poverty. We find orphans are less likely to be...

This paper examines the impact of political competition on block grants from federal to sub-federal levels of government. We model the extent and direction of income redistribution as determined proximately by the political agendas of central decisionmakers and, at a deeper level, by the...

The following pages provide additional material for our paper “Height, Health and Cognitive Function at Older Ages,” forthcoming in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, May 2008. In our discussion of Table 1 in Section II of the paper, we mention that the association between...