Essays on the evolution of health capital

The present dissertation studies changes in the health status and health inequalities in Mexico and the United States since the late nineteenth century. It is a collection of three essays, which are envisaged as independent contributions to the literature.;The first essay explores the trends in health improvement and health inequality in Mexico since 1900, and concludes that while most Mexicans live considerably better today than one hundred years ago, it is not clear whether or not health inequality has declined. The second essay studies the effect of socioeconomic factors on mortality for American men during the twentieth century. The chapter compares two cohorts of adult white American men with similar age distributions in 1900 and 1992. The findings show that at the turn of the twentieth century, environmental differences between geographic areas had an important effect on mortality outcomes. Today, this environmental stress at large has vanished while socioeconomic disparities now appear to play a greater deterministic role on mortality differentials. Finally, the third essay analyzes the changing role of the Body Mass Index (BMI)---a measure of weight for height---as a determinant of mortality. BMI is often used as a predictor of overweight and obesity. There is, however, an important debate among international specialists as to what the risk limits should be, and where the cutoff points should be located. Researchers, especially in developing countries, claim that the limits established for the U.S. are too permissive, and that the threshold to define obese adults should be set lower for other nationalities and ethnicities. The chapter analyzes the mortality risks for different BMI levels of two populations of American adult men. The results indicate that the frontiers of overweight and obesity are expanding over time, and risk is currently associated with higher levels of BMI. The finding may imply that differences in BMI cutoff points are not only cross ethnic, but also occur for similar ethnicities across time.