Barbara Wolfe, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, in 1943. Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Professor of Economics, Population Health Sciences and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Guest of the Rector (1 April 2007 – 30 June 2007)
EXPLORATIONS OF THE INFLUENCE OF INCOME ON HEALTH.
I made significant progress on a number of projects. Exploring the tie between income and health led to the paper, “The Impact of Indian Gaming on American Indian Poverty, Health and Risk-Taking Behaviors” (joint work with R Haveman) which was designed to improve our understanding of the influence of income on health. We estimated models that relate a variety of health outcomes, medical care use and health related behaviors to the presence and extent of gaming facilities; these results will be incorporated into a paper for submission to a health economics journal. Independent of this, I worked on a proposal to explore the tie between income and health using a panel of brain scan, interview and cognitive test data on children and finally to revise a paper (joint with R. Vaithianathan and S. Maani) on the link between income, crowding and health using data from New Zealand to explore this question. I also completed two papers (joint with Jason Fletcher) on consequences of ADHD, one on the increased probability of criminal related activities and one on human capital accumulation. Both papers have been submitted to journals. The last project entitled ‘Public Housing Subsidies and Economic Independence Among Low-Income Families’ (joint with R. Haveman and T. Kaplan) addresses the question of whether the receipt of a Section 8 housing subsidy voucher by low-income families in the U.S. promotes labor market success and economic independence. We made good progress in getting the data in final form and estimating models that simulate an experimental framework for identifying impacts.