Work in the marketplace is the primary source of income for most households in modern industrialized societies. A permanent or even a long-term exit from work by a household's principal earner is therefore a potentially risky economic event. Here we show that social security income (i.e., income...

This paper examines how the economic well-being of households changes after a male household member exits the labor force. We examine, in four countries, labor force exits at various ages and present evidence on household income from various sources before and after the exit occurs. We focus on...

We use Cross-National Equivalent File (CNEF) data from the United States and Great Britain to investigate the association between adults’ health and the income inequality they experienced as children up to 80 years earlier. Our inequality data track shares of national income held by top income...

We analyze data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to explore the relationships between high school completion and the two leading preventable causes of death %u2013 smoking and obesity. We focus on three issues that have received a great deal of attention in research on the...