In 1966, Southern hospitals were barred from participating in Medicare unless they discontinued their longstanding practice of racial segregation. Using data from five Deep South states and exploiting county-level variation in Medicare certification dates, we find that gaining access to an ostensibly integrated hospital had no effect on Black postneonatal mortality. Similarly, there is little evidence that the campaign contributed to the trend towards in-hospital births among Southern Black mothers. These results are consistent with descriptions of the hospital desegregation campaign as producing only cosmetic changes and illustrate the limits of anti-discrimination policies imposed upon reluctant actors.

Using information on birth and kindergarten start dates to generate an exogenous measure of the relative age of a student's peer group, we find that, controlling for age, females with older peers are more likely to use substances than females with younger peers. Because there is no reason to suspect that birth and kindergarten start dates should be correlated with the choice of school, the socioeconomic status of a child's peers, or neighborhood unobservables, we view our results with regard to females as providing support for the idea that peer behavior can be contagious.

This paper explores the effects of peers, friends, family, IQ, and academic performance, observed in the last year of high school, on earnings at ages 35 and 53. All significantly affect earnings at both ages. The effects of IQ are much smaller than asserted in, for example, The Bell Curve , and badly overstated in the absence of controls for family, wider context, or academic performance. Aspirations appear to be very important. Socialization and role models may be as well, but not ability spillovers. Feasible increases in academic performance and education can compensate for the effects of many cognitive and contextual deficits.