Transactional sex is believed to be an important risk-coping mechanism for women in Sub-Saharan Africa and a leading contributor to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This paper uses data from a panel of women in rural Tanzania whose primary occupation is agriculture. The analysis finds that following a...

One goal of government health insurance programs is to improve health, yet little is known empirically about how important such government interventions can be in explaining health transitions. We analyze the child mortality effects of a major health insurance expansion in Costa Rica. In...

Applying the competing--risks model to multi--cause mortality, this paper provides a theoretical and empirical investigation of the positive complementarities that occur between disease--specific policy interventions. We argue that since an individual cannot die twice, competing risks imply that...

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical investigation of the positive complementarities between disease-specific policies introduced by competing risks of mortality. The incentive to invest in prevention against one cause of death depends positively on the level of survival from other...

Enrollment in Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and the high deductible health insurance plans that go with them is increasing rapidly. The accounts benefit from favorable tax status, and President Bush has proposed further expanding tax incentives that favor HSAs. The goal of these policies is to...

Despite the large number of studies, mostly in developed economies, there is limited consensus on the health effects of inequality. Recently a related literature has examined the relationship between relative deprivation and health as a mechanism to explain the economic inequality and health...

This paper exploits longitudinal data and methods to study the determinants of child immunization in 1990s China. Many countries such as China are experiencing rapid economic transitions characterized by declining public health expenditures, privatizing health-care sectors, increased inequality...