Will future increases in life expectancy improve life quality? If we consider the elderly, this is unclear, especially among permanently institutionalized individuals, whose quality of life is often worse.
We demonstrate the potential of using existing micro-level data to credibly assess the impact of improved water provision on the household’s welfare.
The creation of the Spanish public hospital system during Franco’s dictatorship was marked by collaboration and competition with the private sector, due to limited funding and political struggles among elites.
Both plague and smallpox used to exert a heavy death toll on society. We eradicated smallpox with a vaccine, but plague disappeared from most of human society for unknown reasons.
Discriminatory practices against girls reduced their survival chances during the 19th century and early 20th century, especially in Southern and Eastern Europe.
Mortality increases appear to be an early-warning measure for political polarization, especially during times when people are suffering.
We study human development in Colombia since 1838 and observe a sustained increase in well-being, mostly driven by rising life expectancy due to broader access to public sanitary services.
Using a novel measure of healthcare inequality, this research shows that the 1918 Influenza epidemic in South Africa exacerbated existing large racial inequalities in access to institutionalized medical treatment.
The Dutch Cultivation System in nineteenth-century Java used forced labor to cultivate cash crops. This contribution argues that this colonial institution had important negative effects on the local peasantry’s health.
Diverging trends in economic and health indicators complicate assessments of human welfare. This research applies a new metric to understand the evolution of human welfare in early-industrializing England.
