Affiliates' Research in Medical Journals, Summer 2021
Many NBER-affiliated researchers publish some of their findings in medical and other journals that preclude pre-publication distribution. This makes it impossible to include these papers in the NBER Working Paper Series. This is a partial listing of recent papers in this category by NBER affiliates.
. PNAS 118(11), March 2021, e2024777118.
Using death certificates from national vital statistics, this study measures changes in US life expectancy among those with and without a bachelor’s degree from 1990 to 2018. The study examines life expectancy between ages 25 and 75 (since those over 75 have done relatively well over the last three decades). It focuses on the years when deaths rose rapidly through drug overdoses, suicides, and alcoholic liver disease and when the decline in mortality from cardiovascular disease slowed and reversed. The researchers highlight two key findings: 1) there was a decline in life expectancy over this period only for the two-thirds of Americans without a four-year college degree — for both men and women, Blacks and Whites — and 2) the educational difference became a sharper differentiator of expected years of life between age 25 and 75 than race, a reversal of the situation in 1990. For those with and without a four-year college degree, racial divides narrowed by 70 percent between 1990 and 2018, while educational divides more than doubled for both Whites and Blacks. The researchers attribute this pronounced effect of education to the increasing difficulty of building a meaningful and successful life in the United States without a four-year college diploma. With globalization and automation, good jobs have become increasingly rare for workers without this educational credential. For them, real wages have fallen, as has participation in the labor force. Those without a bachelor’s degree also disproportionately report chronic pain, and are affected by the associated opioid epidemic.
. PNAS 118(20), May 2021, e2101165118.
. Women’s Health Issues, May 26 2021.
. Milbank Quarterly 99(1), March 2021, pp. 273−327.
. Journal of General Internal Medicine, March 2021.
. Health Affairs 40(3), March 2021, pp. 461–468.
. Expert Review of Pharmacoeconomics & Outcomes Research 21(3), March 2021, pp. 476–477.
. Health Affairs 40(4), April 2021, pp.603−612.
. JAMA Network Open 4(4), April 2021, e217112.
. JAMA Network Open 4(4), April 2021, e216147.
. BMJ Global Health 6(4), April 2021, e003714.
. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, April 2021.
. JAMA Health Forum 2(5), May 2021, e210342.
. PLoS Med 18(5), May 2021, e1003571.