This paper shows that an expansion of public health insurance to children from low-income families reduced the probability of those children going to prison as adults.

The recent and ongoing stagnation in midlife mortality in the United States is among the country's most urgent health crises, yet its primary causes are unknown. This paper posits that the explanation could lie in another concerning trend that unfolded nearly 80 years ago.

This paper was invited to an issue of The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences edited by Anne Case, Andrew Cherlin, and Angus Deaton entitled "Moving Beyond Deaths of Despair: Rethinking Rising Morbidity and Mortality among Americans without a College Degree." We consider the role of labor markets in mortality gaps by educational attainment.

This paper lays out several key facts about the cessation of progress in successive cohorts in adult mortality rates in the United States. We document the precise timing of the “cohort malaise” as well as its pervasiveness, which form a distinctive signature.