Data and code for: The Broad Decline in Health and Human Capital of Americans Born after 1947

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Nicholas Reynolds, University of Essex

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
replication			06/13/2024 05:10:AM

Project Citation:

Reynolds, Nicholas. Data and code for: The Broad Decline in Health and Human Capital of Americans Born after 1947. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2025. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-05-09. https://doi.org/10.3886/E199165V1

Project Description

Summary: This package provides data and code to replicate the results in the paper: "The Broad Decline in Health and Human Capital of Americans Born after 1947"
Accepted at American Economic Review: Insights

Abstract of the paper:

I present evidence of a cross-cohort decline in the health and human capital of Americans, beginning with those born after 1947 and continuing until those born in the mid-1960s. Education, men’s wages, women’s maternal health (proxied by their infants’ birthweight), and mortality all exhibit trend breaks near the 1947 cohort, such that each outcome worsens for subsequent cohorts relative to prior trend. The decline is large enough to drive: i) educational declines in the 1960s, ii) increases in low birthweight in the 1980s, iii) mortality increases since 1999, and to contribute substantially to iv) wage stagnation since the 1970s.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Health; human capital; wages; cohort; mortality; birthweight

JEL Classification:
I10 Health: General
J01 Labor Economics: General

Geographic Coverage: United States

Time Period(s): 1968 – 2019

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Published Versions

V1 [2025-05-09]

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