The authors use a unique cross-country data set covering nearly 22,000 elderly individuals (age 50+) from 10 European Countries. Cross-country differences in the prevalence of obesity in older Europeans are substantial and exceed sociodemographic differentials in obesity. Obesity is strongly...

A positive relationship between socio-economic status (SES) and health, the so-called "health-wealth gradient", is repeatedly found in most industrialized countries with similar levels of health care technology and economic welfare. This study analyzes causality from health to wealth (health...

The welfare reform bill adopted in the United States in 1996 limited immigrants' eligibility for government assistance programs. In fact, early estimates projected that nearly half of the savings associated with the 1996 reforms would come from eligibility restrictions placed on immigrants....

The objective of this study is to examine the extent to which benefits received from the Unemployment Insurance Program displace assistance that the unemployed receive from their extended family. Using data from a supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, it is found that the unemployed...

Social scientists and commentators disagree on how much of the association between parental divorce and child well-being is causal. This paper reexamines the claim that parental divorce is detrimental to children's emotional well-being, measured in terms of behavior problems. The author analyzed...

This paper explores the relationship between household type and asset accumulation. Householders are distinguished principally along standard demographic lines--whether they marry, divorce, separate, or become widowed. Recently, new data have become available that place far more emphasis on the...

The authors use data from the earlier and later cohorts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to estimate the effect of marriage and childbearing on wages. Their estimates imply that marriage lowers female wages by between two and four percent in the year of marriage. Marriage also lowers...

Euler equation estimation of intertemporal consumption models imposes heavy demands on data and identifiability conditions. For example, one typically needs panel data on consumption, assumptions on expectations, and a parameterization of preferences. The authors aim at reducing some of these...

The authors use the increases in health insurance coverage at age 65 generated by the rules of the Medicare program to evaluate the effects of health insurance coverage on health related behaviors and outcomes. The rise in overall coverage at age 65 is accompanied by a narrowing of disparities...