We revisit the much-investigated relationship between schooling and health, focusing on cognitive abilities at older ages using the Harmonized Cognition Assessment Protocol in the Health & Retirement Study. To address endogeneity concerns, we employ a nonparametric partial identification...

Intensive agriculture and deep plowing resulted in top-soil erosion and dust storms during the 1930s. These effects have been shown to affect agricultural income and land values that persisted for years. Given the growing literature on the relevance of in-utero and early-life exposures, it is...

A rich literature shows that early life conditions shape later life outcomes, including health and migration events. However, analyses of geographic disparities in mortality outcomes focus almost exclusively on contemporaneously measured geographic place (e.g., state of residence at death),...

We hypothesize that the impact of antibiotics is moderated by a population's inherent (genetic) resistance to infectious disease. Using the introduction of sulfa drugs in 1937, we show that US states that are more genetically susceptible to infectious disease saw larger declines in their...

Sibling correlations in socioeconomic status are one of the key measures of equality of opportunity and social mobility, providing an omnibus examination of the importance of family background. Typically, these correlations are interpreted as the combined effects of shared sibling background and...

This paper uses massive online genealogy data from the United States over the 19th century to estimate period and cohort-based sex differences in longevity. Following previous work, we find a longevity reversal in the mid-19th century that expanded rapidly for at least a half century. For...

In 1936, the US government enacted the later-known Bonus Act, which triggered cash transfers to about 3 million veterans who had served in World War I. This paper studies the long-run benefits of veterans’ bonus receipt on their children’s old-age longevity. We employ data from Social...