PAM 4280

The Economics of Risky Health Behaviors

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2019-2020.

Risky health behaviors such as cigarette smoking, drinking alcohol, risky sex, drug use, and poor diet and physical inactivity (leading to obesity) are responsible for hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and impose billions of dollars in medical care costs each year in the United States.  This course teaches the economic approach to studying risky health behaviors.  The research literature on the economic causes and correlates of risky health behaviors will be studied in detail.  Numerous policies to modify risky health behaviors, such as the minimum legal drinking age and recreational marijuana use laws, will be debated in class.  Students will use the statistical software package STATA to analyze data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) in order to answer research questions relating to risky behaviors. 

When Offered Fall.

Prerequisites/Corequisites Prerequisite: PAM 2000 or ECON 3030 and PAM 3100, ECON 3120 or ECON 3140.

Distribution Category (SBA-HE)
Course Attribute (CU-UGR)

• Teach you the economic approach to studying a wide variety of risky health behaviors.
• Help you transition from being a consumer of research to being a producer of research through econometric analysis of data and writing a brief research paper.
• Enhance your written communication skills.

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