This paper attempts to quantify the social, private, and public-finance values of reducing obesity through pharmaceutical and medical interventions. We find that the total social value of bariatric surgery is large for treated patients, with incremental social cost-effectiveness ratios typically...

In 1975, 50 year-old Americans could expect to live slightly longer than their European counterparts. By 2005, American life expectancy at that age has diverged substantially compared to Europe. We find that this growing longevity gap is primarily the symptom of real declines in the health of...

The public economic burden of shifting trends in population health remains uncertain. Sustained increases in obesity, diabetes, and other diseases could reduce life expectancy - with a concomitant decrease in the public-sector's annuity burden - but these savings may be offset by worsening...

This paper sheds light on the causal relationship between education and health outcomes. We combine three surveys (SHARE, HRS and ELSA) that include nationally representative samples of people aged 50 and over from fourteen OECD countries. We use variation in the timing of educational reforms...

In this note we revisit the paper by Fonseca et al. (Series 11: 83-103, 2020) who find that education has a positive effect on health. They use several compulsory schooling reforms as instruments for education. Our objective is to replicate this causal finding, so we start by thoroughly...