We investigate whether the diseases for which there was more biomedical innovation had larger 1999–2019 reductions in premature mortality. Biomedical innovation related to a disease is measured by the change in the mean vintage of descriptors of PubMed articles about the disease. We analyze data on 286 million descriptors of 27 million articles about over 800 diseases. Premature mortality from a disease is significantly inversely related to the lagged vintage of descriptors of articles about the disease. In the absence of biomedical innovation, age-adjusted mortality rates would not have declined. Some factors other than biomedical innovation (e.g., a decline in smoking and an increase in educational attainment) contributed to the decline in mortality. But other factors (e.g., a rise in obesity and the prevalence of chronic conditions) contributed to an increase in mortality. Biomedical innovation reduced the mortality of white people sooner than it reduced the mortality of black people.

Since 2006, Rwanda has experienced a substantial rise in the facility-based delivery (FBD) rate, attributed to various health initiatives. This paper investigates the impact of multiple health reforms on maternal service utilization and neonatal mortality rates. Employing a difference-in-differences framework utilizing geographical variation in the baseline FBD rate, our estimates indicate a 10–17 percentage point increase in FBD and a 0.15–0.18 times increase in the number of antenatal care visits. While our analysis indicates some evidence of a reduction in neonatal mortality rates, the findings are inconclusive. Nevertheless, our results suggest that the effect of the reforms on neonatal mortality rates was weakly intensified for those residing near district hospitals providing care for complicated pregnancies.

Using three waves (2011–15) of CHARLS data, we analyze the short-term effects of widowhood on cognitive function among older Chinese. Fixed-effect models show that widowhood has significant adverse effects on cognition for rural elders but not for urban ones. Furthermore, compared to rural men, rural women exhibit greater declines in cognition, especially in fluid cognition. We explore the possible mechanism from the neighborhood perspective. The results show that community sports and entertainment facilities and public services can effectively mitigate the negative impact of widowhood on cognitive function for rural widows. Sports and entertainment facilities can mainly enhance word recall ability, especially delayed word recall. Public services such as elderly health centers focusing on the healthcare function for the elderly can also improve the word recall ability of rural widows. On the other hand, family-based elderly care centers mainly increase the cognition ability of mental intactness.

How have preventive and curative medical breakthroughs shaped life expectancy and the dispersion of age at death in the United States over the past century? We address this question by developing a life-cycle model in which both health and lifespan are endogenous. The model distinguishes between preventive innovations, which reduce the incidence of disease, and curative advances, which lower mortality risks associated with existing health conditions. Our quantitative analysis shows that while both types of medical innovation have contributed to increased life expectancy since 1935, curative advances have been the primary driver of the decline in the dispersion of age at death. Medical innovations have also improved welfare – measured in terms of a consumption-equivalent metric – by an average of 0.11% per year, with curative advances representing the most significant contribution. These findings are robust across different scenarios and parametrization strategies.

In this paper, we leverage newly available rich administrative data to study the heterogeneous evolution of fertility and newborn health during the pandemic. We focus on Tuscany, a representative region of Italy, which was one of the first countries to experience the severe impact of the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020. Our findings indicate a decline in the number of births relative to the pre-pandemic trend in late 2020 and early 2021, roughly nine to twelve months after the pandemic onset. However, starting in March 2021, birth numbers consistently exceeded the pre-pandemic trend, resulting in a cumulative “baby bump” compared to the counterfactual scenario. This aggregate increase conceals significant heterogeneity across sociodemographic groups, with positive deviations entirely driven by native, educated, and employed parents. During the same period, newborn health indicators showed no signs of deterioration and, if anything, slightly improved.