Health Economics.

• Position: Program and Working Group Meetings

The NBER's Program on Health Economics met in Cambridge on April 13. Program Director Michael Grossman organized the meeting. These papers were discussed

Javier A. Birchenall, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Rodrigo R. Soares, University of Maryland and NBER, "Altruism, Fertility, and the Value of Children: Health Policy Evaluation and Intergenerational Welfare"

Donald Kenkel, Cornell University and NBER, "The Evolution of the Schooling-Smoking Gradient"

Charles L. Baum II, Middle Tennessee State University, and Christopher J. Ruhm, University of North Carolina and NBER, "Age, Socioeconomic Status, and Obesity Growth"

Emily Oster, University of Chicago and NBER, "HIV and Sexual Behavior Change: Why not Africa?" (NBER Working Paper No. 13049)

Elizabeth Oltmans Ananat, Duke University, and Daniel M. Hungerman, University of Notre Dame and NBER, "The Power of the Pill for the Next Generation"

Tinna Laufey Asgeirsdottir, University of Iceland, "Health and Income: The Case of Iceland"

Birchenall and Soares account for the value of children and future generations in the evaluation of health policies by incorporating altruism and fertility into a "value of life" type of framework. They are able to express adults' willingness to pay for changes in child mortality and to incorporate the welfare of future generations into the evaluation of current policies. Their model clarifies a series of puzzles from the literature on the "value of life" and on intergenerational welfare comparisons. They show that, by incorporating altruism and fertility into the analysis, the estimated welfare gain from recent reductions in mortality in the United States easily doubles.

Kenkel explores how the schooling-smoking gradient has evolved over time. Using data from 11 Gallup Surveys conducted between 1954 and 1999, he finds that the schooling-smoking gradient first emerged in tandem with a schooling-health knowledge gradient. As early as 1957, 62 percent of college graduates agreed that smoking was a cause of lung cancer, compared to only 46 percent of those with less than a college degree. After the mid-1970s, the schooling-knowledge gradient began to flatten, but the schooling-smoking gradient did not. To further explore patterns of smoking behavior, Kenkel econometrically analyzes data on individual life-course smoking histories from retrospective information available in six cycles of the Tobacco Use Supplements to the Current Population Survey...