The Broad Decline in Health and Human Capital of Americans Born after 1947

Nicholas Reynolds

American Economic Review: Insights, 2025, vol. 7, issue 2, 141-59

Abstract: I present evidence of across-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' birth weight), 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 educational declines in the 1960s, increases in low birth weight in the 1980s, and mortality increases since 1999 and to contribute substantially to wage stagnation since the 1970s.

JEL-codes: I12 I26 J13 J16 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aeri.20230588 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E199165V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/23096 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/23097 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aerins:v:7:y:2025:i:2:p:141-59

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20230588

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review: Insights is currently edited by Amy Finkelstein

More articles in American Economic Review: Insights from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().