In the past few decades, some measures of population risk have improved, while others have deteriorated. Understanding the health of the population requires integrating these different trends. We compare the risk factor profile of the population in the early 1970s with that of the population in...

Has U.S. health care for the elderly become more equitable during the past several decades? When inequality is measured by Medicare expenditures, the answer is yes. During 1987-2001, low income households experienced an increase of 78 percent ($2624) in per capita expenditures, double the...

This paper examines 313 U.S. areas for differences in medical care utilization and mortality of whites ages 65-84 in 1990. The variables included in the analysis are education, real income, cigarette sales, obesity, air pollution, percent black, and dummy variables for seven regions and five...

The fivefold increase in opioid deaths between 2000 and 2017 rivals even the COVID-19 pandemic as a health crisis for America. Why did it happen? Measures of demand for pain relief - physical pain and despair - are high but largely unchanging. The primary shift is in supply, primarily of new...

The question of whether morbidity is being compressed into the period just before death has been at the center of health debates in the United States for some time. Compression of morbidity would lead to longer life but less rapid medical spending increases than if life extension were...

Understanding how healthy lifespans are changing is essential for public policy. This paper explores changes in healthy lifespan in the U.S. over time and considers reasons for the changes. We reach three fundamental conclusions. First, we show that healthy life increased measurably in the US...