The paper develops a theoretical framework, and a diagrammatic apparatus, for explaining the supply of child labour. It examines the effect of credit, insurance, and poverty (defined as more than just low income). It also explains bonded child labour, a modern form of slavery closely associated...

Looking across many diseases, average health among mature men is much worse in America compared to England. Second, there exists a steep negative health gradient for men in both countries where men at the bottom of the economic hierarchy are in much worse health than those at the top. This...

Using microdata for adults from the 1987-2000 years of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, I show that smoking and height-adjusted weight decline during temporary economic downturns while leisure-time physical activity rises. The drop in tobacco use occurs disproportionately among...

There are severe inequalities in health in the world, poor health being concentrated amongst poor people in poor countries. Poor countries spend a much smaller share of national income on health expenditure than do richer countries. What potential lies in political or growth processes that raise...

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we investigate the impact of health on domestic migration within the United States. We find that, for men below 60 years of age, a move from the middle to the bottom of the health distribution reduces mobility by 32-40%. Non-random attrition...

It is well documented that immigrants are in better health upon arrival in the United States than their American counterparts, but that this health advantage erodes over time. We study the potential determinants of this "healthy immigrant effect", with a particular focus on the tendency of...

This paper examines an accumulating modern literature on the health benefits of relationships like marriage. Although much remains to be understood about the physiological channels, we draw the judgment, after looking across many journals and disciplines, that there is persuasive longitudinal...

Several firm-related aspects of employee productivity are analyzed using GSOEP data. The basic premise is that, as a consequence of frustration, overeducated employees are less productive than their correctly allocated colleagues. However, the results obtained in the present study contradict the...

What do social surveys of life cycle experience tell us about the determinants of subjective well-being? First, that the psychologists’ setpoint model is wrong. Life events in the nonpecuniary domain, such as marriage, divorce, and physical disability, have a lasting effect on well-being, and...

In the past century, more people have perished from famine than from the two World Wars combined. Many more were exposed to famine and survived. Yet we know almost nothing about the long run impact of famine on these survivors. This paper addresses this question by estimating the effect of...