Markets are often lauded for their efficiency, but Nora Szech’s research shows that individuals are more likely to act against their moral convictions in market contexts. Markets may insulate one from the moral demands of Adam Smith’s impartial spectator, severing the link between personal responsibility and the moral outcomes of one’s actions. Drawing on the literature of compensating wage differentials, we aim to quantify the price of conscience in labor market transactions. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97) and Occupational Information Network (O*NET), we estimate the wage effects of occupations that varyingly require workers to act against their sense of right and wrong. Our longitudinal fixed-effects analysis shows that jobs demanding greater compromise of one’s conscience offer higher wages, indicating a compensating differential for the burdening of conscience. This premium appears to increase with education and age, suggesting that experienced and educated workers require a higher price for the compromise of conscience. These findings extend Szech’s experimental evidence on morals and markets to real-world labor markets, showing that the moral costs of market participation find their way into prices. As workers are paid more for compromising their convictions, markets may incentivize individuals to accept roles they otherwise find objectionable, aligning with Szech’s research on how markets erode moral convictions and with Adam Smith’s foundational observations on the compensation of dishonor and disgrace in labor markets.

Provisions of the Clean Air Act (CAA) of 1970 targeted the anti-knock lead additive tetraethyl-lead (TEL) in automotive gasoline, specifying a phase-out schedule commencing in 1975. Because emissions from leaded gasoline use was the predominant source of lead exposure in children in this era, the phase-out caused a precipitous drop in measured child blood lead levels (BLLs). Factors pertaining to the economic geography of petroleum and automotive industries caused meaningful variation in lead emissions across states between 1975 and 1990. Exploiting this temporal and spatial variation in the phase out leaded gasoline and using a nationally representative sample of geo-referenced individuals born during a period of significant retreat in leaded gasoline emissions, we find consistent evidence of later-in-life impairment on standardized tests in both mathematical reasoning and reading comprehension from early childhood lead exposure. Paralleling reductions in TEL concentrations of leaded gasoline and child BLLs in this period, we estimate that the national policy improved test scores by about 0.15 standard deviations. We also find that the suppression of standardized test performance from early childhood lead exposure was dose-responsive and uniform through the distribution of test performance. We also perform a divergent validity test on the lead exposure-independent outcomes of an individual’s dominant hand preference in writing and throwing, showing that early childhood lead exposure has no affect on these traits. As compared to published studies on contemporaneous IQ effects of lead exposure, our causal estimates suggest that the deleterious cognitive effects of early childhood exposure may worsen with age, implicating economic cost estimates of the global burden of lead exposure.

This study aims to analyze recent trends in the consumption of kratom drinks and assess their potential public health implications. A retrospective observational approach was employed, utilizing content analysis of Reddit posts discussing kratom. Data were gathered from the top 20 kratom-related subreddits using the PRAW package in Python. Posts and comments containing keywords associated with kratom drinks were extracted and aggregated on a monthly basis. To account for the growth in Reddit user base over time, the number of posts was normalized accordingly. The analysis identified a marked increase in interest in kratom drinks beginning in mid-2022, which correlates with their expanded availability in vape shops, bars, convenience stores, and online platforms. These findings suggest a growing concern regarding the public health impact of kratom drink consumption. The study underscores the importance of raising public awareness about the potential risks associated with these products.

We estimate well-being among older rural Americans with an expected utility framework and simulations using longitudinal data spanning nearly 30 years from the Health and Retirement Study. At age sixty, we find mean rural consumption expenditures of 24,105 dollars, a retirement probability of 53%, and a remaining life expectancy of 20.3 years for the cohort born 1931-36. When adjusting life expectancy for living in poor health, we obtain an age sixty quality adjusted life expectancy (QALE) of only 15.4 years. Our welfare metric suggests well-being among socially isolated rural residents is only about half that of more integrated rural residents—largely driven by substantial consumption and QALE gaps. We also document substantial regional variation in rural well-being. Moreover, we find that older rural Americans are generally falling further behind older urban Americans across birth cohorts. Most of this widening gap is driven by declining relative consumption and wealth as opposed to health.

We estimate racial and ethnic disparities in well-being among older Americans using longitudinal data and an expected utility framework that incorporates differences in consumption, leisure, health, mortality, and wealth. Our measure broadly indicates that racial and ethnic inequality is larger than suggested by other welfare metrics such as consumption or life expectancy alone. Decomposition exercises show that a majority of the estimated welfare gaps are determined by age sixty initial conditions as opposed to racial and ethnic differences in dynamic processes after age sixty. Additional counterfactuals suggest that eliminating common heath risk factors such as hypertension or diabetes in late-life only marginally closes overall welfare gaps. These simulations suggest that policies aimed at closing racial and ethnic gaps in late-life may be more successful and efficient if targeted earlier in the life-cycle.

We quantify the welfare cost of depression among older Americans by estimating a panel VAR model of mental and physical health, labor supply, and consumption using data from the Health and Retirement Study. We use the estimated model and age sixty joint distribution of outcomes to simulate life-cycle paths with and without prevalence of depressive symptoms after age sixty. We estimate that the prevalence of late-life depressive symptoms costs an average of between 0.85 and 2.1 years in quality-adjusted life expectancy per person. Moreover, depression may result in an average loss of labor supply of up to 1.1 months and lifetime consumption of up to 16,000 US dollars. Combining into a single compensating variation welfare metric, we estimate a bound on the average welfare cost of depression of 8–15 percent of annual consumption after age sixty. On aggregate, this amounts to roughly 180–360 billion US dollars annually. We also project that while the average welfare cost of late-life depression is declining slightly over birth cohorts, the welfare burden is becoming significantly more unequal.