The risk of mortality in breast cancer among women is a critical health issue worldwide. Scholars argue that breast cancer mortality rates have decreased in many advanced countries overall. How-ever, about 50% of world population in 2017 was in poor and developing countries (more than 3,652...

The globally surging demand for electricity increases coal consumption and sulfur dioxide (SO2) pollution. However, the causal evidence of the effects of SO2 pollution on health is scarce, especially in developing countries. We leverage a large national environmental policy implemented to reduce...

This paper studies the immediate and long-run mortality effects of the first community-based health intervention in the world, which had a particular focus on controlling tuberculosis - the so-called Framingham Health and Tuberculosis Demonstration. Comparing death and TB-mortality rates between...

This paper's findings suggest that an arbitrary Chinese policy that greatly increases total suspended particulates (TSP) air pollution is causing the 500 million residents of Northern China to lose more than 2.5 billion life years of life expectancy. The quasi-experimental empirical approach is...

Political and economic transition is often blamed for Russia's 40% surge in deaths between 1990 and 1994 (the "Russian Mortality Crisis"). Highlighting that increases in mortality occurred primarily among alcohol related causes and among working-age men (the heaviest drinkers), this paper...

The 21st century has been a period of rising inequality in both income and health. In this study, we find that geographic inequality in mortality for midlife Americans increased by about 70 percent from 1992 to 2016. This was not simply because states such as New York or California benefited...

How harmful can government regulations and protectionism be? We provide evidence of a sizable negative impact of government interventions on population health. In 2012, the Russian government implemented a strategy to increase the affordability of pharmaceutical drugs and develop domestic...

This paper evaluates whether the level of public corruption influences COVID-19 case fatality rates. Using cross-section data, including 64 countries and multiple regression techniques, we find that the level of corruption is positively and significantly associated with COVID-19 human costs....

The novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that causes the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is still circulating in 2021 with new mutations and the state of emergency remains in manifold countries. Countries have applied in 2020 nonpharmaceutical interventions to...

I use 2018-2020 weekly data on maternal deaths for all states in Mexico and find evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic led to a meaningful increase in maternal deaths during 2020. Using a Poisson count regression model that accounts for seasonal trends and unobserved differences across states, I...