HYSIOLOGICAL STUDY of man's food needs and capacity for physical work began on a systematic basis about seventy years ago. Following upon Atwater's classic experiments with a human calorimeter at the end of the last century, the validity of using rates of oxygen consumption as the basis for measuring energy expenditure (indirect calorimetry) was firmly established. Throughout this early period ...

Using data from the 1980–2001 Consumer Expenditure Surveys, we investigate how impending widowhood affects households’ expenditure patterns. We find that total annual expenditures are $4,027 higher for about-to-be-widowed households compared to otherwise comparable continuously married couples. Within subcategories, expenditures average $4,108 higher for the miscellaneous subcategory which incl...