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on Health Economics |
| By: | Hamish Low (University of Oxford); Costas Meghir (Yale University); Luigi Pistaferri (Stanford University); Alessandra Voena (Stanford University) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the impact of the social safety net on marriage, labor supply, and divorce. We specify and estimate a life-cycle model of single and married individuals to evaluate the welfare and behavioral effects of the 1996 PRWORA reform, which introduced time limits and work requirements. The model incorporates limited commitment between spouses, endogenous marriage and divorce, and human capital accumulation. We find that the reform led to a significant decline in welfare participation, an increase in employment, and a decrease in divorce rates, particularly for lower-educated women. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for the long-run impacts on household formation and intra-household insurance when evaluating welfare policy. |
| Date: | 2025–11–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:2121r3 |
| By: | Ahammer, Alexander (Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz); Halla, Martin (Department of Economics, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); Austrian National Public Health Institute (GOEG); Rockwool Foundation Berlin; and Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO)); Heckl, Pia (ifo Institute. Poschingerstraße 5, Germany; Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and CESifo); Rudolf Winter-Ebmer (Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA); Institute for Advanced Studies (IHS); Rockwool Foundation Berlin, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)) |
| Abstract: | Long-term unemployment among older workers is particularly difficult to overcome. We study the impacts of a large-scale job guarantee program that offered up to two years of fully subsidized employment to long-term unemployed individuals aged 50 and above. Using a sharp age-based discontinuity in eligibility, we find that participation increased regular, unsubsidized employment by 43 percentage points two years after the program ended. The gains are driven by transitions into new firms and industries, rather than continued subsidized employment, and we find no evidence of displacement effects for non-participants or spillovers to family members. The program had no measurable short-run health effects. |
| Keywords: | Long-term unemployment, temporary job guarantee, subsidized employment, health status |
| JEL: | J64 J08 J78 I14 H51 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ihs:ihswps:number63 |
| By: | Oliver Schlenker |
| Abstract: | Healthcare systems worldwide face increasing nurse shortages, but the consequences remain poorly understood. This paper studies how nurse scarcity in hospitals affects care provision and patient health. I exploit the 2011 Swiss franc stabilization, which increased the salience to cross-border commute from Germany to Switzerland and led to an outflow of nurses in German hospitals depending on their distance to the border. Using rich universal patient-, hospital-, and county-level German and Swiss administrative data in a matched differencein-differences design, I show that border hospitals lose around 12 percent of their nursing staff. This leads to lower care intensity and a reallocation of services towards urgent cases (triage) while healthcare demand or supply outside hospitals remains unchanged. Consequently, in-hospital mortality rises by 4.4 percent – concentrated among emergency and older patients – and life expectancy decreases by 0.28 statistical life years, with no evidence of offsetting gains in Switzerland. These results highlight that nurse scarcity shapes hospital production and widens health disparities across patients and regions. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ifowps:_11/2024 |
| By: | Brandyn F. Churchill; Kathryn R. Johnson |
| Abstract: | Broadband internet has become a critical component of U.S. infrastructure, but policymakers are increasingly concerned that the widespread adoption of this technology has adversely affected adolescent mental health. To test this hypothesis, we use 2009–2019 National and State Youth Risk Behavior Survey data and leverage the nationwide rollout of broadband internet. First, we show that adolescents in states with greater broadband internet access reported spending more time online. Next, we find that a one-standard-deviation increase in broadband internet access was associated with a 9.3–16.5-percent increase in adolescent suicide ideation. While we document increases in suicide ideation for both girls and boys, the results are most pronounced for adolescent girls. Exploring potential mechanisms, we show that greater broadband internet access was associated with increases in cyberbullying and body dissatisfaction among adolescent girls and a reduction in the likelihood that adolescent boys reported getting an adequate amount of sleep. |
| JEL: | I12 I18 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34614 |
| By: | Hübner, Niklas; Stahl, Nuan Susanne; Süß, Karolin |
| Abstract: | We examine the long-term health effects of peacetime conscription in the German Democratic Republic using a regression-discontinuity design that exploits the introduction of conscription in 1962 and resulting variation in conscription between birth cohorts. Conscription eligibility increases musculoskeletal hospitalizations later in life, consistent with descriptive evidence on overuse injuries during service, and raises sick leave during draft-eligible ages and after the German reunification. These effects are not explained by education or wages but partly by occupational sorting into physically demanding jobs. Our findings highlight lasting health burdens of military service and long-term consequences of physical strain and injury. |
| Abstract: | Wir untersuchen die langfristigen gesundheitlichen Folgen der Wehrpflicht in Friedenszeiten in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik mithilfe eines Regression-Diskontinuitäts-Designs, das die Einführung der Wehrpflicht im Jahr 1962 und die daraus resultierende Variation in Einberufungswahrscheinlichkeiten zwischen Geburtskohorten nutzt. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Wehrpflicht langfristig zu einer Erhöhung der Krankenhausaufenthalte aufgrund muskuloskelettaler Erkrankungen führt, was sich mit deskriptiven Befunden zu Überlastungsschäden während des Wehrdienstes deckt. Zudem führt die Wehrpflicht zu einer Erhöhung der Krankheitstage während des wehrpflichtigen Alters und nach der deutschen Wiedervereinigung. Diese Effekte lassen sich nicht durch höhere Bildung oder Löhne erklären, sondern teilweise durch eine berufliche Selektion in körperlich belastende Tätigkeiten. Unsere Ergebnisse verdeutlichen die dauerhaften gesundheitlichen Belastungen durch den Militärdienst sowie die langfristigen Folgen von körperlicher Belastung und Verletzungen. |
| Keywords: | Conscription, Health, Authoritarian States |
| JEL: | H56 I18 J24 P36 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:334530 |
| By: | Filippo Pavanello (ifo Institute, LMU Munich, CESifo Research Network, Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment); Giulia Valenti (Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice) |
| Abstract: | In 2004, Italy introduced a national program to address heat-related health risks, combining public awareness campaigns, heat-wave warning systems, and hospital protocols. Leveraging administrative mortality data and high-frequency temperature variation, we show that the program reduced heat-related mortality by more than 57% on days at or above 30°C. To identify the mechanisms, we exploit the staggered introduction of heat-wave warning systems across provinces and show that treated areas experienced substantially larger reductions in heat-related mortality. We further document that information disclosure plays a key role in driving these reductions. Overall, our findings underscore the importance of public adaptation policies that rely on information provision to cost-effectively mitigate the health impacts of extreme temperatures. |
| Keywords: | Temperature, mortality, adaptation, information, warning systems |
| JEL: | Q54 Q58 H51 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fem:femwpa:2025.35 |
| By: | Mevlude Akbulut-Yuksel; Dhaval M. Dave; Bilge Erten; Pinar Keskin; Catarina R. Meneses |
| Abstract: | Substance use is a well-established driver of intimate partner violence (IPV), with drug-related incidents posing persistent challenges for both public health and criminal justice systems. We examine how expanding access to substance use treatment (SUT) services affects IPV in the United States by leveraging variation in the opening and closing of treatment facilities at the county level. Using administrative data on IPV incidents from the National Incident-Based Reporting System at the agency level from 1998 to 2019 combined with county-level records on treatment facility information, we implement a continuous difference-in-differences research design. Our results show that adding three SUT facilities—the average annual increase per county over the sample period—reduces drug-involved IPV by about 1.5–1.7 percent. We find no evidence of significant effects on alcohol-related or non-substance-related IPV. Staggered event-study analyses confirm parallel outcome trends, across treated and non-treated counties, prior to net facility openings and lend support to a causal interpretation of the estimates. Related evidence from SUT admissions drawn from the Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) shows that new centers significantly raise treatment entry, particularly among men, consistent with reduced perpetration driving the observed decline in IPV exposure. Our findings highlight the role of health services infrastructure in shaping violence-related outcomes and underscore the broader public safety benefits of investment in treatment access. |
| JEL: | I12 I18 J12 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34642 |
| By: | Hiroaki Kaido; Kirill Ponomarev |
| Abstract: | Exclusion and shape restrictions play a central role in defining causal effects and interpreting estimates in potential outcomes models. To date, the testable implications of such restrictions have been studied on a case-by-case basis in a limited set of models. In this paper, we develop a general framework for characterizing sharp testable implications of general support restrictions on the potential response functions, based on a novel graph-based representation of the model. The framework provides a unified and constructive method for deriving all observable implications of the modeling assumptions. We illustrate the approach in several popular settings, including instrumental variables, treatment selection, mediation, and interference. As an empirical application, we revisit the US Lung Health Study and test for the presence of spillovers between spouses, specification of exposure maps, and persistence of treatment effects over time. |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2512.20851 |
| By: | Thomas Schober (New Zealand Policy Research Institute) |
| Abstract: | Immunisation during pregnancy is a vital strategy to protect infants from infectious diseases in their first months of life. Drawing on administrative data from New Zealand, I analyse the relationship between birth order, maternal vaccination against pertussis and influenza, and subsequent infant hospitalisations caused by these diseases. The findings show that later-born children experience higher hospitalisation rates, likely because of increased exposure to infectious diseases through older siblings. At the same time, maternal vaccination rates decline with each pregnancy, leaving those who would benefit most from maternal immunisation the least likely to receive it. |
| Keywords: | Birth order, maternal immunisation, child health, pertussis, influenza |
| JEL: | I10 I12 I18 C23 |
| Date: | 2026–01–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aut:wpaper:2026-01 |
| By: | Sonia Bhalotra, Sonia (University of Warwick, CAGE, IFS, CEPR, RFBerlin, IZA, CESifo); Clarke, Damian (Universidad de Chile, University of Exeter, and IZA); Venkataramani, Atheendar (University of Pennsylvania and NBER) |
| Abstract: | We leverage the introduction of the first antibiotic therapies in 1937 to examine the long run effects of early childhood pneumonia on adult educational attainment, employment, income, and work-related disability. Using census data, we document large average gains on all outcomes, alongside substantial heterogeneity by race and gender. On average, Black men exhibit smaller schooling gains than white men but larger employment and earnings gains. Among Black men (and women), we identify a pronounced gradient in gains linked to systemic racial discrimination in the pre–Civil Rights era: individuals born in more discriminatory Jim Crow states realized much smaller gains than those born in less discriminatory states. There is no similar gradient among white Americans. Women of both races exhibit smaller education and earnings gains than men on average, consistent with cultural and institutional barriers to women’s work. Our findings highlight the role of opportunities in shaping the extent to which investments in early-life health translate into longer run economic gains. |
| Keywords: | early childhood; medical innovation; race; human capital production; education; income; disability; systemic discrimination; institutions; infectious disease; pneumonia; antibiotics; sulfa drugs JEL Classification: I10, I14, J71, H70 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cge:wacage:785 |
| By: | Wang, Jingbin; Hu, Wuyang; Li, Jian; Qing, Ping |
| Abstract: | Over the past several decades, corrective taxes on products such as tobacco and alcohol have been widely employed as public health tools. With the rising prevalence of non-communicable chronic diseases associated with excessive sugar consumption, an increasing number of countries have implemented corrective taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs). However, existing evidence on the effectiveness of such taxes remains inconclusive. Using a discrete choice experiment, this study evaluates the health and market effectiveness of SSB taxation under varying levels of tax salience, and examines the trade-off between these two policy objectives. Results indicate that when health effectiveness is prioritized, presenting both tax information and the tax amount yields the strongest behavioral response. In contrast, when market effectiveness is the primary concern, providing tax information alone proves most effective. When both objectives are considered simultaneously, displaying tax information along with the tax rate offers the most balanced outcome. These findings provide policy-relevant insights into how adjustments in tax salience can help reconcile health and market goals in the design of SSB taxes. |
| Keywords: | Food Security and Poverty |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea25:360886 |
| By: | Rahman, Rajib |
| Abstract: | I estimate the causal effects of soda tax policy on firms’ advertising strategies and its effect on advertising elasticity in Berkeley across major diet and regular soda brands. Using weekly sales and advertising spending data from 2014 to 2015, I analyze the impact of Berkeley, California’s soda tax policy, passed on November 2014, on the advertising effectiveness for diet and regular soft drinks across major brands, as well as its impact on firms’ advertising expenditure. While existing literature provides evidence of advertising effectiveness across various products from a marketing perspective, I examine how this effectiveness changes under soda tax policies, a public health tool frequently used to mitigate the health risks of excessive sugar intake from soft drink consumption. I find evidence that advertising is less effective in the regular soda category under such policies in Berkeley compared to the beverage category, which was not taxed. I also find significant evidence that firms reduced advertising spending for regular soda by approximately 16.4% in the post-policy Berkeley. Additionally, firms adopted spatial marketing strategies, decreasing advertising spending near Berkeley while increasing it in more distant areas. These findings offer new insights into soda tax policies and have important implications for manufacturers’ pricing and marketing strategies, as well as for policymakers regarding public health outcomes. |
| Keywords: | Industrial Organization, Demand and Price Analysis |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea25:360968 |
| By: | Kim, Beomyun |
| Abstract: | This study examines how changes in state sales tax rates affect retail prices and consumer purchases of soda and candy. Between 2009 and 2018, five U.S. jurisdictions (Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Vermont, and Washington, D.C.) eliminated reduced sales tax rates on these products, providing natural experiments for analysis. Using retail scanner data from 2008 to 2019, the study applies Synthetic Difference-in-Differences and related methods to estimate causal effects of these policy changes. The results yield three main findings. First, statistically significant reductions in sales volumes are observed only in states where tax increases exceeded five percentage points. Second, stronger consumer responses are observed for soda than for candy. Third, consumer responses strengthen gradually over time rather than materializing immediately. This is the first study to comprehensively analyze the effects of sales tax exemption terminations on beverage and snack markets across multiple states with staggered adoption, demonstrating that the magnitude of tax effects may be associated with product characteristics and tax rate changes, with important implications for the design of health-related tax policies. |
| Keywords: | Food Security and Poverty |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea25:360882 |
| By: | Saha, Kajari |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the causal relationship between climate shocks and women’s experiences of physical intimate partner violence (P-IPV) in rural India. Using geo-coded weather data linked to domestic violence reports from the two recent rounds of the Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS 2015–16 and 2019–21), I find that droughts, wet shocks, and extreme heat during the most recent kharif growing season significantly increase the likelihood of women experiencing P-IPV. Specifically, exposure to a drought during the growing season increases the prevalence of less-severe P-IPV by 11.6%, while wet shocks increase severe P-IPV by 30.6%. Heat stress, measured as cumulative degree days above 30°C, is also associated with higher rates of both less-severe and severe IPV. Further analysis suggests that increased economic insecurity, husband’s alcohol use and marital controlling behaviors, and a decline in women’s empowerment are central pathways underlying these effects. Additional heterogeneity analyses reveal that household characteristics — such as land ownership and bank account access play a protective role by offering formal or informal insurance that helps buffer the harmful effects of drought on P-IPV. |
| Keywords: | Farm Management |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea25:360945 |
| By: | Moslem Rashidi; Luke B. Connelly; Gianluca Fiorentini |
| Abstract: | We study how pandemic-related disruptions to preventive care affected severe health events among older Europeans. Using panel data from eight countries in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we exploit quasi-random variation in interview timing and COVID-19 restrictions to compare women who missed a routine mammogram with otherwise similar women who were screened. Our outcome (all-cause emergency overnight hospitalizations) captures severe acute episodes rather than cancer-specific events. Simple associations show no difference in these hospitalizations over the following year. In contrast, our instrumental-variables estimates suggest that screening reduces the probability of an emergency hospitalization by about 6 percentage points among women in the screening-eligible age range. We find no effect among women above the target age range, supporting our identification strategy. Overall, the results indicate that maintaining access to preventive services during crises can reduce avoidable acute events in ageing populations and strengthen health-system resilience to large shocks. |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2512.18342 |
| By: | Almulhem, Norah |
| Abstract: | Electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) taxation has emerged as a key policy tool for regulating consumption and addressing public health concerns. While existing research suggests that e-cigarette taxes increase retail prices and reduce volume sales, little is known about their effects in recent years, particularly following widespread tax implementations after 2019. This study examines the impact of state-level e-cigarette taxes on retail prices and sales volume using NielsenIQ Retail Scanner Data (RSD) from 2018 to 2023. Employing a Synthetic Difference-in-Difference (SDID) framework, this analysis leverages variation in monthly tax adoption across states to estimate the causal effects of taxation on e-cigarette markets. The empirical findings indicate that 78% of the tax is passed on to consumer retail prices, leading to significant price increases but modest declines in sales volume. The estimated own price elasticity for e-cigarettes is -0.30, suggesting a relatively inelastic demand response. Additionally, the magnitude of these effects varies across states and tax structures, highlighting the heterogeneous impact of e-cigarette taxation. These findings underscore the need for well-design tax policies, as the weak consumer response may require additional measures to effectively reduce smoking (including vaping) and improve public health. |
| Keywords: | Health Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea25:360928 |
| By: | Carsten Andersen; Timo Hener |
| Abstract: | Wind turbines play an important role in the green transition towards a pollutionfree generation of electricity. Yet, the deployment of new wind turbines faces increasing local and political opposition. The public discourse routinely goes beyond wind turbines’ established negative impact on house prices. However, evidence on how residents react to new turbines and whether human health and labor market outcomes are affected remains limited. We study how industrial-scale onshore wind turbines affect nearby communities in Denmark, combining geo-coded information on all wind turbines installed after 1995 with 25 years of administrative full-population data. Exploiting the staggered timing of wind turbine establishments in an event-study framework allowing for heterogeneous treatment effects, we estimate the impact on neighborhood composition at the address level, and on mental health and labor market outcomes at the individual level. We find small negative effects on the occupancy of houses nearby large turbines, indicating a decrease in attractiveness. However, we detect no meaningful impacts on mental health, productivity, or the socio-economic composition of neighborhoods. Overall, our evidence does not indicate large adverse health effects from proximity of wind turbines, but it is consistent with local disamenities. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ifowps:_423 |
| By: | Brant, Kristina; Ge, Mengjun; Lei, Zhen |
| Abstract: | The relationship between climate disasters and substance use harms has been understudied. This study employs a mixed methods research design to assess the impact of severe floods on overdose deaths and identify relevant mechanisms driving this relationship. Drawing on opioid overdose death data from NCHS, presidential disaster declarations from FEMA, and severe storm event data from NOAA, we find severe floods in rural Appalachia led to a significant increase in county-level overdose death rates that persists for a decade post-flood. We then collected retrospective qualitative data from 17 stakeholders regarding the floods that occurred in Eastern Kentucky in July 2022. Interviews suggest this increase is perpetuated by decreased access to treatment, recovery, and harm reduction services; increased trauma; increased instability; and persistent stigma around help-seeking. Due to the predicted continuation of these disasters, understanding their impact on substance use harms is essential to mitigating future damage. |
| Keywords: | Environmental Economics and Policy |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea25:360761 |
| By: | Gupta, Shivani J.; McCullough, Ellen B.; McGavock, Tamara; Assefa, Thomas Woldu; Getahun, Tigabu Degu |
| Abstract: | Women bear a disproportionate burden of unpaid and care work, a factor that could explain why depression is twice as common among women as men. Although evidence abounds on how the double burden affects labor market opportunities and empowerment, few interventions address mental health outcomes or directly engage men in unpaid work. We evaluate a phone-based Behavior Change Communication (BCC) intervention that engaged men through personalized discussions on gender norms over 14 weeks, among ultra-poor households in Ethiopia. The intervention significantly reduced depressive symptoms for both spouses, coinciding with a shift in household labor: treated men’s contributions to chores increased by 40 percent, with sons also contributing more. Consequently, women’s overall chore burden declined, allowing them to focus on tasks they prefer. These findings highlight that redistributing household responsibilities can enhance both partners’ well-being and result in inter-generational benefits. |
| Keywords: | Consumer/Household Economics, Labor and Human Capital |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:aaea25:360937 |