Tom S. Vogl

SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS AND HEALTH: DIMENSIONS AND MECHANISMS

This paper reviews the evidence on the well-known positive association between socioeconomic status and health. We focus on four dimensions of socioeconomic status -- education, financial resources, rank, and race and ethnicity -- paying particular attention to how the mechanisms linking health to each of these dimensions diverge and coincide. The extent to which socioeconomic advantage causes good health varies, both across these four dimensions and across the phases of the lifecycle. Circumstances in early life play a crucial role in determining the co-evolution of socioeconomic status and health throughout adulthood. In adulthood, a considerable part of the association runs from health to socioeconomic status, at least in the case of wealth. The diversity of pathways casts doubt upon theories that treat socioeconomic status as a unified concept.

Marriage Institutions and Sibling Competition: Evidence from South Asia*

Using data from South Asia, this article examines how arranged marriage cultivates rivalry among sisters. During marriage search, parents with multiple daughters reduce the reservation quality for an older daughter’s groom, rushing her marriage to allow sufficient time to marry off her younger sisters. Relative to younger brothers, younger sisters increase a girl’s marriage risk; relative to younger singleton sisters, younger twin sisters have the same effect. These effects intensify in marriage markets with lower sex ratios or greater parental involvement in marriage arrangements. In contrast, older sisters delay a girl’s marriage. Because girls leave school when they marry and face limited earning opportunities when they reach adulthood, the number of sisters has well-being consequences over the life cycle. Younger sisters cause earlier school-leaving, lower literacy, a match to a husband with less education and a less skilled occupation, and (marginally) lower adult economic status. Data from a broader set of countries indicate that these cross-sister pressures on marriage age are common throughout the developing world, although the schooling costs vary by setting. JEL Codes: J1, I25, O15.

Mosquitoes: The Long-Term Effects of Malaria Eradication in India

We examine the effects of malaria on educational attainment by exploiting geographic variation in malaria prevalence in India prior to a nationwide eradication program in the 1950s. Malaria eradication resulted in gains in literacy and primary school completion rates of approximately 12 percentage points. These estimates imply that the eradication of malaria can explain about half of the gains in these measures of educational attainment between the pre- and post-eradication periods in areas where malaria was prevalent. The effects are not present in urban areas, where malaria was not considered to be a problem in the pre-eradication period. The results cannot be explained by convergence across areas. We find gains for both men and women as well as for members of scheduled castes and tribes, a traditionally disadvantaged group.

Rising up with shoe leather? A comment on Fair Society, Healthy Lives (the Marmot Review).

Fair Societies, Healthy Lives (Marmot Review, 2010), the final report of the Marmot Review on health inequalities in England, begins by quoting Pablo Neruda: “Rise up with me against the organization of misery” (p. 2). This passionate call to arms seems well-suited for a treatise that promises cures to some of society’s greatest ills. Commissioned by the British Secretary of State for Health, the Review is charged with consolidating the evidence on health inequalities and developing evidence-based policy proposals to reduce them. In this commentary, we discuss the Review and its prescriptions from the perspective of economists who are interested in using research to inform the design of better public policy. TheReviewbeginswith anoverviewof the relationships between health and various measures of social standing, also known as the social gradient in health. These include the traditional domains of education, income and employment, as well as less-known topics such as work control and neighborhood social capital. The Review also pays special attention to the role of early-life circumstance in shaping the social gradient in health. Health inequalities, the Review contends, arise because of social inequalities, so efforts to reduce health inequalities must start with action in the social sphere. Economists will find this descriptive enterprise of enormous importance. Yet a vast majority of this research remains

Education and Health in Developing Economies

This paper reviews recent research on the relationship between education and health in poor countries. Multiple causal pathways link the two domains, across different phases of an individuals life cycle and across generations in a family. Within an individual, childhood health enhances schooling outcomes, longevity incentivizes human capital investment, and education improves adult health. Across generations, the health and education of parents -- particularly mothers -- boost both outcomes in their children.