Opportunity for Health
@oppforhealthlab.bsky.social
We study how economic opportunity affects health, and test interventions and policies that can boost opportunity and improve health for all Americans. opportunityforhealth.org
Proud of @oppforhealthlab.bsky.social lab predoc Ritikaa Khanna and @ncsp-penn.bsky.social fellow Michael Wang for leading this interesting paper. There is a suble hat tip to Heckman-Vytacil in the discussion section :)
JAMA Health Forum@jamahealthforum.com · 2w agoIn Medicaid, covering obesity-labeled #GLP1 receptor agonists was associated with higher obesity-labeled use, while total glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist use increased less, suggesting possible substitution across label indications. ja.ma/4xPkKxn
WIC benefits have notoriously low take-up for some groups. Our new study in Health Affairs led by @emilydore.bsky.social found that allowing benefits to be issued remotely during pandemic boosted take-up. www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/... @capolicylab.bsky.social @oppforhealthlab.bsky.social
How does hospital strain affect racial disparities in mortality? A novel analysis by @atheendar.bsky.social and @vinisingh.bsky.social found that as beds grew scarce, Black patients faced longer waits, less provider effort and a higher risk of death. https://bit.ly/4gxhMZ0
When Hospitals Get Busier, Black Patients Face Higher Death Risk
Resource scarcity increases discriminatory behaviors and beliefs, psychology experiments show. Now, a first-of-its-kind LDI study in the American Economic Review shows that resource discrimination…
ldi.upenn.edu
Many Americans feel “stuck” in their lives. The PSC's @atheendar.bsky.social and @oppforhealthlab.bsky.social have found it's making them sick. Read more in his @inquirer.com op-ed: https://bit.ly/4xgdef1
Americans feel stuck -- and it's making us sick | Opinion
We've reached our 250th anniversary as a stuck country. It's more than just poverty, loneliness, or a lack of opportunity -- and it is one of the biggest threats to our public health.
inquirer.com
Feeling “stuck” can harm health. LDI expert and physician @atheendar.bsky.social and his team at @oppforhealthlab.bsky.social found that 1 in 5 U.S. adults feel this way. In a new @inquirer.com op-ed, he examines this public health crisis—and what can help: https://bit.ly/4w5bRid
Americans Feel Stuck. It’s a Public Health Crisis
LDI Fellow Atheendar Venkataramani discusses why Americans feel “stuck,” how this is a threat to public health, and offers potential solutions.
ldi.upenn.edu
Expanding H-1B visas boosted US worker incomes and productivity, especially in non-STEM jobs, with gains flowing downstream via supply chains, from Ran Abramitzky, Leah Platt Boustan, Ahmet Gulek, and Jens Hainmueller www.nber.org/papers/w35560
Why do so many Americans feel “stuck”—and what does that mean for public health? In the @inquirer.com, LDI's @atheendar.bsky.social argues that understanding economic insecurity, disability, isolation, and limited mobility is key to improving health nationwide. https://bit.ly/4xgdef1
Americans feel stuck — and it’s making us sick | Opinion
We’ve reached our 250th anniversary as a stuck country. It’s more than just poverty, loneliness, or a lack of opportunity — and it is one of the biggest threats to our public health.
inquirer.com
1/ **New Op-ed** My patients often tell me they feel #stuck and that it makes them sick. In the last few years we @oppforhealthlab.bsky.social have defined and measured #stuckness and its impact on #health. We have come to see stuckness as a unifying explanation for our country's health crisis.
New working paper from Ritikaa Khanna, @rourkeobrien.bsky.social, @astokespop.bsky.social, @atheendar.bsky.social, & me We apply a new lens to the great (non-Covid) debate of US mortality studies: What's up w the 2010s? It emphasizes that US longevity worsened against a background of increasing $$
The U.S. Mortality Crisis as a Preston Curve Reversal
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...
nber.org
Totally agree. This is why we @oppforhealthlab.bsky.social tried to measure one of the sentiments that just kept bubbling up. Feeling "stuck": opportunityforhealth.org/project/stuc...
Stuckness in America – Opportunity for Health
opportunityforhealth.org
Pam Herd@pamherd.bsky.social · 5mo agoAs someone who collects data for a living, I'm very worried we're missing or ignoring key indicators that are shaping peoples' experiences. Loss of health insurance, food assistance, cost increases, etc. I don't think "people are wrong" is a rational interpretation at this point
1/ Today we @oppforhealthlab.bsky.social are releasing our report: "Stuckness in America." #Stuckness is a #feeling + material #reality that reinforce one another in a self-perpetuating #trap. 1 our of every 5 Americans are #stuck. opportunityforhealth.org/project/stuc...
Stuckness in America – Opportunity for Health
opportunityforhealth.org
The 1850–1910 high school boom explains about one-third of rising female labor force participation. But gains bypassed Black children and favored richer families, widening racial and class gaps, from Alison Doxey, Ezra Karger, and Peter Nencka www.nber.org/papers/w35068
🚨 Check out our brand new #website 🚨 Redesigned with fresh, easy to access summaries of our work! Interested in our missing of "advancing $health by expanding #opportunity and #hope"? Read on! opportunityforhealth.org
Opportunity for Health – Evidence-based research for healthy and hopeful futures.
opportunityforhealth.org
Can economic #opportunity help flatten the #income-#health gradient in the United States? Check out our new @medrxivpreprint.bsky.social by Anant Mishra, @rourkeobrien.bsky.social, and Atheen Venkataramani! Paper here: www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6... Key figure:
Teaser: The % of working age Americans from our survey who strongly agree with the statement: "I currently feel stuck in life."
Atheendar Venkataramani@atheendar.bsky.social · 6mo agoOur team @oppforhealthlab.bsky.social is working on a related point. There might be a deeper sentiment here than just perceiving being material worse off. We are calling it "stuckness." Report on Stuckness in America to come soon.
PARC AGING CHAT TODAY AT NOON! Monday, April 6th, from 12-1 pm “The Growing Issue of Homelessness/Housing Insecurity and Aging” with Rebecca T. Brown & Dennis P. Culhane HYBRID EVENT PSC Commons, McNeil 403 & Zoom (see image for login information)
🚨 Check out our brand new #website 🚨 Redesigned with fresh, easy to access summaries of our work! Interested in our missing of "advancing $health by expanding #opportunity and #hope"? Read on! opportunityforhealth.org
Opportunity for Health – Evidence-based research for healthy and hopeful futures.
opportunityforhealth.org
🚨@oppforhealthlab.bsky.social has a new website!!🚨 Fully redesigned, and full of helpful summaries of our work and associated resources. Our mission: "Advancing health by expanding opportunity and hope." Find out how: opportunityforhealth.org
In 1937, sulfa drugs--some of the first antibiotics--were introduced. This lowered childhood pneumonia rates. As a direct result, kids with access to these antibiotics... 1 stayed in school longer, 2 had higher incomes, & 3 worked more/had fewer work limiting disabilities. Antibiotics FTW!
🚨🚨 It's new research week for me on the socials! 🚨🚨 First up, just released today as an NBER working paper: "More Hours, More Work: Head Start Expansions Boost Maternal Employment" with fantastic coauthors Esra Kose and Maria Rosales-Rueda www.nber.org/papers/w34831
Congratulations to Charles Manski on winning the BBVA Frontiers Award for his foundational contributions to partial identification, semiparametric methods, subjective expectations, social interactions and policy decision-making under uncertainty www.premiosfronterasdelconocimiento.es/noticias/xvi...
XVIII Premio Fronteras del Conocimiento en Economía a Charles Manski
por incorporar la incertidumbre en la investigación económica y su aplicación al análisis de las políticas públicas
premiosfronterasdelconocimiento.es
@atheendar.bsky.social was recently quoted in the @nytimes.com on infant mortality rates - a critical public health issue that had been improving for decades but recently stalled. Check out what he says this could be attributed to: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/h...
Infant Mortality Fell for Decades. Why Did That Stop?
nytimes.com
Public preschools facilitate early diagnoses and treatment of behavioral and developmental conditions that can hinder learning, from Maya Rossin-Slater, Adrienne Sabety, and Aileen Wu www.nber.org/papers/w34677
Happy New Year from all of us at Opportunity for Health! There's a lot coming from us in 2026, including: -Redesigned website with research summaries -Findings from the first ever Stuckness in America Survey -Results from the IGNITE Study of Concentrated Investment in Low-Income Neighborhoods
The first antibiotics reduced childhood pneumonia, boosting adult human capital and income. However, discriminatory institutions curtailed long-run gains from a healthy start, from Sonia R. Bhalotra, Damian Clarke, and Atheendar Venkataramani www.nber.org/papers/w34606
The 1975 Voting Rights Act extension lowered mortality for most nonwhite groups but raised it for white adults and older nonwhite men, patterns consistent with status threat, from Atheendar Venkataramani, Rourke O'Brien, Elizabeth F. Bair, and Christopher A. Lowenstein www.nber.org/papers/w34421
Political institutions determine who governs -- and who lives. We find that enfranchising marginalized groups improved their health. We also find that redistribution of power led to relative increases in mortality for non-targeted groups--despite material circumstances improving for all groups.
Atheendar Venkataramani@atheendar.bsky.social · 11mo ago1/ New paper w/ @rourkeobrien.bsky.social, @clowenstein.bsky.social, and Elizabeth Bair showing how the Voting Rights Act had starkly different effects on #mortality by race and age -- and the potential importance of #status #threat in explaining these findings. www.nber.org/papers/w34421
