We study the effects of accessing better healthcare on the schooling and labor supply decisions of sick children in Tanzania. Using variation in the cost of formal-sector healthcare to predict treatment choice, we show that accessing better healthcare decreases length of illness and changes children's allocation of time to school and work.…

We develop a model of induced innovation that applies to medical research. Our model yields three empirical predictions. First, initial death rates and subsequent research effort should be positively correlated. Second, research effort should be associated with more rapid mortality declines. Third, as a byproduct of targeting the most common…

This paper analyzes the relationship between a woman's intrahousehold bargaining position and her welfare within marriage using household data from rural China. Simultaneity problems are overcome by using dowry to proxy for bargaining position. Omitted variable bias is addressed by using grain shocks in the year preceding marriage as an instrument…

We use administrative data on a sample of births between 1978 and 1985 to investigate the short-, medium-, and long-term consequences of poor infant health. Our findings offer several advances to the existing literature on the effects of early infant health on subsequent health, education, and labor force attachment. First, we use a large sample…

We estimate trends in intergenerational economic mobility by matching men in the Census to synthetic parents in the prior generation. We find that mobility increased from 1950 to 1980 but has declined sharply since 1980. While our estimator places greater weight on location effects than the standard intergenerational coefficient, the size of the…

We analyze why child poverty rates were much higher in Britain than in Western Germany during the 1990s, using a framework focusing on poverty transition rates. Child poverty exit rates were significantly lower, and poverty entry rates significantly higher, in Britain. We decompose these cross-national differences into differences in the…

In this paper, we describe the household wealth distribution in the United States and United Kingdom over the past two decades, and compare both wealth inequality and the form in which wealth is held. Unconditionally, there are large differences in financial wealth between the two countries at the top fifth of the wealth distribution. Even after…