We provide novel evidence on the impact of a child's health shock on parental labor market outcomes. To identify the causal effect, we leverage long panels of high-quality Finnish and Norwegian administrative data and exploit variation in the timing of the health shock. We do this by comparing...

This paper evaluates the impact of a sudden and unexpected nation-wide alcohol sales ban in South Africa. We find that this policy causally reduced injury-induced mortality in the country by at least 14% during the five weeks of the ban. We argue that this estimate constitutes a lower bound on...

This paper investigates the impact of state-level Certificate-of-Need (CON) laws on COVID and non-COVID deaths in the United States during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. CON laws limit the expansion and acquisition of new medical services, such as new hospital beds. The coronavirus pandemic created a...

This paper evaluates the impact of a sudden and unexpected nation-wide alcohol sales ban in South Africa. We find that this policy causally reduced injury-induced mortality in the country by at least 14% during the five weeks of the ban. We argue that this estimate constitutes a lower bound on...

This research explores the persistent effect of the Neolithic Revolution on the evolution of life expectancy in the course of human history. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the onset of the Neolithic Revolution and the associated rise in infectious diseases triggered...

This research explores the persistent effect of the Neolithic Revolution on the evolution of life expectancy in the course of human history. It advances the hypothesis and establishes empirically that the onset of the Neolithic Revolution and the associated rise in infectious diseases triggered...

This paper examines the effect of national income on the total fertility rate (children born per woman). We estimate the effects on fertility of shocks to national per capita income using plausibly exogenous variations in oil price shock as an instrument for income and using instrumental...

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about massive declines in wellbeing around the world. This paper seeks to quantify and compare two important components of those losses - increased mortality and higher poverty - using years of human life as a common metric. We estimate that almost 20 million...

The 21st century has been a period of rising inequality in both income and health. In this study, we find that geographic inequality in mortality for midlife Americans increased by about 70 percent from 1992 to 2016. This was not simply because states such as New York or California benefited...

Does the organisation of healthcare systems affect health outcomes in a pandemic situation? To answer this question, we analysed the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic by focusing on mortality rate outcomes and exploited the heterogeneity of the healthcare organisational models among Italian...

In this paper, I combine economic theories of health behavior and addiction in order to explain the phenomenon of anorexia nervosa and its impact on health and longevity. Individuals consume normal goods and foods and can work off excess calories with physical exercise. There exists a healthy...

We provide a novel decomposition of changing gaps in life expectancy between rich and poor into differential changes in age-specific mortality rates and differences in "survivability". Declining age-specific mortality rates increases life expectancy, but the gain is small if the likelihood of...

On July 13, 2020 a complete nation-wide ban was placed on the sale and transport of alcohol in South Africa. This paper evaluates the impact of this sudden and unexpected five-week alcohol prohibition on mortality due to unnatural causes. We find that the policy reduced the number of unnatural...

Recessions are complex events that affect personal health and behavior via various potentially opposing mechanisms. While recessions are known to have negative effects on mental health and lead to an increase in suicides, it has been proven that they reduce mortality rates. A general health...

Countries restrict the overall extent of international travel and migration to balance the expected costs and benefits of mobility. Given the ever-present threat of new, future pandemics, how should permanent restrictions on mobility respond? A simple theoretical framework predicts that reduced...

This paper uses several large cross-sectional data sources and a new approach to estimate midlife effects of entering the labor market in a recession on mortality by cause and various measures of socioeconomic status. We find that cohorts coming of age during the deep recession of the early...

This paper assesses the effect of import competition on the labor market and health outcomes of US workers. We first show that import shocks affect employment and income, but only in areas where jobs are more intense in routine tasks. Exploiting over 40 million individual observations on health...

Using panel data covering 180 countries over six decades, this paper shows that recessions are systematically associated with higher mortality rates. During years when GDP falls, death rates rise, primarily in emerging market and developing economies and there among children in particular. In...

Purpose of the article: With the ever-increasing development of property prices and the disproportionate number of new housing developments, the question is which factors have an impact on this phenomenon from the-out-of-the-box perspective. For the article, the main variables which influence...

We study the effects of public pension systems on the retirement timing of older workers and, in turn, the health consequences of delaying retirement by those workers. Causal inference relies on a social security reform in Israel that shifted payments from husbands to their (non-working) wives,...

The COVID-19 virus, also known as the coronavirus, is currently spreading around the world. While a growing literature suggests that exposure to pollution can cause respiratory illness and increase deaths among the elderly, little is known about whether increases in pollution could cause...

In an effort to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the globe adopted social distancing measures. Previous studies have relied on the geographical and temporal variation in the adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to show that early adoption of NPIs...

We study how a negative labor market shock like job loss generates health spillovers in couples. Using administrative data of all workers and firms matched to mortality and patient records, we document that male job displacement increases the mortality risk for both the man and his partner. For...

Worldwide, countries have been restricting work and social activities to counter an emerging public health crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic. These measures have caused dramatic increases in unemployment in the short run, with an expected deepening of the recession in the long run. Some...