Does improved health impact earnings?

According to a recent paper by Stephens and Toohey (2022), the answer is ‘yes’. This paper examines the labor market effects of a randomized health intervention of working-age men that was focused on reducing mortality due to coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States. MRFIT succeeded in improving the health…

Are all the good men married?

Does marriage cause men’s wages to rise?  This is the question addressed by UCSD professor Kate Antonovics and Robert Town in their 2004 paper in AER cleverly titled “Are all the good men married?” It has been shown that married men earn more money than non-married men with similar characteristics.  Why is this?  A few…

Wage inequality

Many economists have noted that wage growth has not kept up with overall economic growth over the past few decades.  We observe widening wage inequality since the 1970s.  Are workers getting poorer relative to the owners of capital?  Is a communist revolution needed to equalize the playing field? Economist Martin Feldstein thinks not.   “Feldstein…