The authors analyze the two-year prospective relationship between marital status and health - mortality, chronic conditions, functional status, self-rated health, and depressive symptoms - in midlife. The authors find no evidence that marriage is more strongly associated with health among men...

A substantial literature has considered the effects of welfare reform policies on the aggregate caseload but has been less successful in disaggregating the effects of specific policies. Using monthly caseload data from October 1989 through June 2003, we estimate a flexible model for the dynamic...

This study employs vital statistics data from Sweden, England, Wales, France, and Spain to examine male:female mortality differentials from 1750 through 2000 and their inter-relationship with epidemiological transitions. Across all ages and all time periods, the largest relative mortality...

In this paper, the author examines the effects of social and economic development on inequalities in under-five mortality for the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil, over a twenty-one year period during which much of the infant and child mortality transition unfolded. The author investigated whether the...

Age at first mariage has risen dramatically since the mid-1960s among a wide spectrum of the U.S. population. Researchers have considered many possible explanations for this trend. Few, though, have asked why individuals should want to delay marriage in the first place. One possibility is that...

The authors provide comparable evidence on the patterns and trends in obesity across the Atlantic and analyze whether there are economic rationales for public intervention to control obesity. They take into account equity issues as well as efficiency considerations, which are organized around...

CPS estimates of annual health insurance coverage are below estimates from other surveys and administrative data. One potential explanation is that respondents misinterpret the question and report current rather than past year status. The authors use CPS data matched to administrative enrollment...

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides food and nutritional advice to low-income women, and infants and children, who are income eligible and are nutritionally-at-risk. The effects of WIC on infants have been extensively studied, but children...

Kindergarten policy varies widely both across and within states. Over the past decade, a number of states have instituted a full-day kindergarten requirement and a number of others are considering it as a way of increasing educational achievement. Many parents also support full-day kindergarten...

Comparing self-assessed indicators of subjective outcomes such as health, work disability, political efficacy, job satisfaction, etc. across countries or socio-economic groups is often hampered by the fact that different groups use systematically different response scales. Anchoring vignettes...