We examine the extent to which assimilation and residential ethnic enclaves are associated with immigrant access to smoking-related fringe benefits. In particular, we consider access to office smoking bans and employer-sponsored smoking cessation programs. These worksite characteristics are...

This study investigates how admission rates to specialty substance abuse treatment facilities vary across the business cycle using administrative data from the Treatment Episodes Data Set between 1992 and 2010. We find that admission rates decrease in economic downturns. Our preferred...

A large literature has examined the healthcare consequences of obesity. A major barrier to careful study of these consequences is reliance on self-reported measures of weight and height. Previous research has developed algorithms to adjust for such error among working age adults. In this study...

The author tests whether leaving school in an economic downturn persistently affects alcohol use. She models alcohol use in middle age as a function of the state unemployment rate at school-leaving in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 Cohort. The results suggest that men, but not...

This study investigates how rising obesity has affected eligibility to serve in the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (PHSCC), the uniformed service charged with protecting and promoting public health in the U.S. Data are drawn from the National Health and Nutrition...

Unlike most developed countries, the U.S. lacks a federal paid sick leave policy. As a result, many workers must choose between losing earnings and attending to childcare responsibilities. To date, 14 states and the District of Columbia have adopted paid sick leave mandates that provide up to...

Social insurance programs shield individuals from specific risks, but these programs are not necessarily independent of each other. The existence and scope of one program can potentially influence the use of others, especially when the risks covered by the programs are related. This study...

Child maltreatment is a pressing concern in the United States, with more than four million children referred to child protective services in 2022. Reducing child maltreatment is a national health objective given the substantial, negative consequences for children who experience maltreatment,...

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has introduced several pay-for-performance programs in the last few years to encourage hospitals to improve quality of care and reduce costs. Some state Medicaid programs have also introduced pay-for-performance for nursing homes. Long-term care...

To develop and validate a general method (called regression risk analysis) to estimate adjusted risk measures from logistic and other nonlinear multiple regression models. We show how to estimate standard errors for these estimates. These measures could supplant various approximations (e.g.,...