This paper presents results from an unusual microdata set assembled by the authors and researchers at the Social Security Administration. The data set pools information from three sources: death certificates for residents of Washington, D.C. dying in 1967; Washington, D.C. estate tax returns; and Social Security earnings records. Under an arrangement worked out by Smith with the city of Washington and the National Center for Health Statistics, all (about 2,500) estate tax returns for 1967 decedents were matched with their death certificates. The match provided information on age, sex, race, place of birth, marital status, cause of death and assets and liabilities. Washington, D.C. has its own estate tax, which unlike the federal estate tax, starts at a very low ($1,000) filing level. A full description of this part of the data base and an estate multiplier estimate of the distribution of wealth in Washington, D.C. has been published elsewhere (Smith). This year, thanks to our colleagues, Frederick Scheuren and Wendy Alvey of the Social Security Administration, a procedure was worked out which permitted us to turn over to them our files and to obtain from them analytical results from matched records from our files and their records of covered earnings under the Social Security Act. The intended use of this data base is to estimate a lifetime savings model with earnings as a key determinant. We still may be able to do so, but the prospects look rather grim. In the spirit that science is advanced by knowing what doesn't work as well as wuiat does, we present below a few initial findings which show some promise and of a lot of statistical husbandry which bore little fruit. We shall proceed by first looking at differences in the levels of covered income reported by black and white workers, then at the wealth levels of blacks and whites, and finally at an attempt to predict the wealth of black and white workers using demographic variables and earnings records.

In the theory of exhaustible resources, the classical result, originally derived by Harold Hotelling (J. Polit. Econ., 39: 137-75 (1931)) is that the scarcity rent of the resource must increase at the rate of interest. The scarcity rent is the market price of the resource less extraction costs. At the depletion time, the market price must be equal either to the zero demand price or the cost of a perfect substitute, assuming no adjustment costs in switching to the substitute. The substitute may be either a natural resource with a higher extraction cost or a backstop technology. The Hotelling result is a price equilibrium condition in a competitive asset market (Solow, Amer. Econ. Rev. Proc., 64: 1-14 (1974)). It is also an efficiency condition for allocating the resource over time in a first best world. However, Solow raises the possibility that constraints creating a wedge between interest rates may be important considerations in the resource allocation problem. In a second-best world it is not at all clear how fast the scarcity rent of the resource should increase from a social viewpoint. However, for one simple case the analysis of this problem is straightforward. Suppose consumption is determined by a Keynesianmore » consumption function with marginal propensity to consume (1 - s); s is marginal propensity to save. With consumption determined in this behavioral manner, savings may be inadequate to reduce the market interest rate to the point where it is equal to the social rate of time preference. It is argued here that for this case the scarcity rent of the resource should increase at a rate equal to a weighted combination of these two interest rates.« less

It is becomino recocnized in the United States that nutrition in the broadest sense, that is, all substances that are ingested, is a very important factor in health, perhaps the most important over which mia,n has atny control. To some extent this insight results from observation of relations between geochemistrv and health.' For example, the relationship between iodine deficiency and enildemiic goiter has been recognized for many years. Similarly the relationislhips between iron deficiency and anemiiia and betweeni flouride deficiency and clental caries are well known. Others include zinlc deficiency and dwarfism, and lithium deficiency and mental disorders. As such relationships become better understood, large opportunities to improve health through preventive measures become available. It is most unfortunate that medical research has devoted itself almost entirely to cures rather than understanding the etiology of disease. Even nmore urgent perhaps than understanding how natural geochemlistry influences health and disease is finding out how human interventions in the chemistry of the environment ar-e related to disease. T here are many such effects possible and a number have occurr-ed on a relatively large scale. Dramatic instances of heavy mletal poisoning have happened, mlost notably in Japan. A number of combustion products discharged to the atmosphere from stationary anid mlobile sources are implicated in luing disease. But the suspected relationshlips between environmental contamination and cancer are currently receiving the most attention because in many ways that is our most important disease. Cancer incidence has been rising at an average rate of approximately 1 percent a year for somne time. Heart disease is still the largest killer, accounting for about 40 percent of total deaths in 1975 according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But the death rate from heart disease went down while cancer deaths, about 20 percent of the total, went up more than 2 percent in 1975. Contrary to the impression which might be gained from some of the more dramatic stories in the press, the long term rise has been dominated by only one form of this disease, lung cancer. Since 1930 lung canicer has been rising steadily for both men and women but much more rapidly for the former. The recent upturn in lung cancer rates for women reflects the delayed (relative to men) popularity of cigarette snmoking amiiong women. Thus, the increase in female smoking in the 1930's and 1940's may shortly cause a dramatic increase in female lung canicer rates. Stomach cancer has been trending pretty steadily clownward, although quite recently cancers of the digestive tract have shown an increase and the others have been constant. The increase in lung cancer appears, as mentioned, to be strongly related to smoking. Lest one feel complacent about the situation, however (all we have to do is stop smoking and anyway smokinig is voluntary, one might say), one should recall three sets of facts. First, the cancer rate is high in the United States, accounting for a large portion of mortality, and death from cancer is often especially painful. Second, *Prl)fcssor of Econiomics and Associate Professor of Econoimiics. respectively The Univei-sity of New Mexico. 'For a review ot the evidence, see Geochemnisatrs atid th, Enovironmenot, I, National Academy of Sciences 1974.