Mortality is a crucial indicator of wellbeing and recent mortality trends have been a subject of public debate in many Western countries. This paper compares mortality inequality in Canada and the U.S. over the period 1990/91 through 2010/11. In Canada, mortality inequality remained constant...

We develop a method to compare levels and trends in inequality in mortality in the United States and France in a similar framework. The comparison shows that while income inequality has increased in both the United States and France, inequality in mortality in France remained remarkably low and...

The events of 9/11 released a million tons of toxic dust into lower Manhattan, an unparalleled environmental disaster. It is puzzling then that the literature has shown little effect of fetal exposure to the dust. However, inference is complicated by pre-existing differences between the affected...

Although there is a large gap between Black and White American life expectancies, the gap fell 48.9% between 1990-2018, mainly due to mortality declines among Black Americans. We examine age-specific mortality trends and racial gaps in life expectancy in rich and poor U.S. areas and with...

Without the opioid epidemic, American life expectancy would not have declined prior to 2020. In turn, the epidemic was sparked by the development and marketing of a new generation of prescription opioids and provider behavior is still helping to drive it. There is little relationship between the...

Exploiting geological variation within shale deposits and timing in the initiation of hydraulic fracturing, this paper finds that allowing fracing leads to sharp increases in oil and gas recovery and improvements in a wide set of economic indicators. At the same time, estimated...

That prenatal events can have life-long consequences is now well established. Nevertheless, research on the Fetal Origins Hypothesis is flourishing and has expanded to include the early childhood (postnatal) environment. Why does this literature have a “second act?” We summarize the major...

Using national data on opioid prescriptions written by physicians from 2006 to 2014, we uncover a striking relationship between opioid prescribing and medical school rank. Even within the same specialty and practice location, physicians who completed their initial training at top medical schools...

Using a unique dataset linking preschool blood lead levels (BLLs), birth, school, and detention data for 120,000 children born 1990-2004 in Rhode Island, we estimate the impact of lead on behavior: school suspensions and juvenile detention. We develop two instrumental variables approaches to...

We study the effects of prenatal exposure to violent crime on infant health, using New York City crime records linked to mothers' addresses in birth records data. We address endogeneity of assault exposure with three strategies and find that in utero assault exposure significantly increases the...