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Association of cigarette smoking with changes in macroeconomic conditions
This study uses data from the 1987-2022 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and state-level employment rates from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics to estimate the association between macroeconomic conditions and cigarette smoking. Our finding suggests a positive association, which constantly declined with time after the 2001 recession. We find that a one percentage point increase in the employment rate is associated with a 1.4% higher likelihood of smoking cigarettes in the overall sample but declined to 0.4% among cohorts surveyed from 2011 to 2022. We also find strong positive and heterogeneous associations among...
Source: Economics and Human Biology - May 4, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Samuel Asare Source Type: research

The changing relationship between bodyweight and longevity in high- and low-income countries
Econ Hum Biol. 2024 Apr 24;54:101392. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101392. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTStandard measures of bodyweight (overweight and obese, for example) fail to reflect differences across populations and technological progress over time. This paper builds on the pioneering work of Hans Waaler (1984) and Robert Fogel (1994) to empirically estimate how the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and longevity varies across high-, middle-, and low-income countries. Importantly, we show that these differences are so profound that the share of national populations above mortality-minimizing bodyweight is not c...
Source: Economics and Human Biology - May 4, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Joanna Kopinska Vincenzo Atella Jay Bhattacharya Grant Miller Source Type: research

Race, immunity, and lifespan: Unraveling the effect of early-life exposure to malaria risk on lifespan
Econ Hum Biol. 2024 Apr 12;54:101382. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101382. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTWe investigate a historical experience to measure the long-term effect of malaria on lifespan among infected survivors and identify a factor that mitigates malaria's effect. Using a sample of Union Army veterans born during the mid-19th century and their lifetime records, we show that exposure to high risk of malaria at birth or in early life substantially shortened their lifespan. The legacy of exposure to malaria is robust while controlling for lifetime socioeconomic and health conditions, fixed effects, and considering se...
Source: Economics and Human Biology - April 22, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Sok Chul Hong Inhyuk Hwang Source Type: research

Does facial structure explain differences in student evaluations of teaching? The role of fWHR as a proxy for perceived dominance
Econ Hum Biol. 2024 Apr 16;54:101381. doi: 10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101381. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTDominance is usually viewed as a positive male attribute, but this is not typically the case for women. Using a novel dataset of student evaluations of teaching in a school of Business and Economics of a selective university, we construct the face width-to-height ratio (fWHR) as a proxy for perceived dominance to assess whether individuals with a higher ratio obtain better evaluations. Our results show that a higher fWHR is associated with a better evaluation for male faculty, while the opposite is the case for female facult...
Source: Economics and Human Biology - April 20, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Valentina Paredes Francisco J Pino David D íaz Source Type: research

Left-digit bias in self-reported height
This study associates self-reported height with this cognitive bias. Taller stature is frequently associated with desirable attributes such as higher earnings and leadership positions; individuals may aspire to be taller and, consequently, report a height greater than their actual measurement. We posit that this inclination is more pronounced when combined with left-digit bias. In other words, individuals whose actual height ends in nine, such as 169 cm, are more likely to report their height as 170 cm than individuals with an actual height of 170 cm who report it as 171 cm. To conduct this analysis, we used data from an a...
Source: Economics and Human Biology - April 13, 2024 Category: Biology Authors: Hyunkuk Cho Source Type: research