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on Health Economics |
| By: | Kurt J. Lavetti; Long Hong; Jonathan A. Holmes; Trevon D. Logan |
| Abstract: | To what extent is a worker's relative rank within their workplace a determinant of health status, conditional on income? We provide the first US-based evidence on the relationship between relative workplace rank and health status for the near population of workers in one US state. Using a new linkage of commercial all-payer health insurance data to administrative earnings records for workers in Utah from 2013-2015, we quantify the impact of relative workplace rank on health status, the incidence of specific chronic diseases, and racial health disparities. We show that about 70% of SES-health gradient that is commonly interpreted as an income gradient actually operates through relative rank. For an average worker, moving from the 90th to the 10th percentile of within-firm rank holding fixed income, age, location, and health insurance characteristics is associated with a 16.5% increase in morbidity. The racial segregation of jobs in the US leads minority workers to be overrepresented in lower-ranked jobs within firms, which in turn exacerbates racial health disparities. |
| JEL: | I0 I14 J0 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33514 |
| By: | Janet Currie |
| Abstract: | The child mental health crisis has been described as the “defining public health crisis of our time.” This article addresses three myths about the crisis: (i) the idea that the crisis is new; (ii) the belief that increases in youth suicide mainly reflect deterioration in children’s underlying mental health; and (iii) the myth that investments in children have little impact on children’s mental health. In fact, the cri- sis has existed for decades, youth suicides vary asynchronously with other mental health measures and are impacted by external factors such as firearms legislation, and investments can improve child mental health and prevent suicide. |
| JEL: | I12 I18 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33632 |
| By: | Han Choi; Adriana Corredor-Waldron; Janet Currie; Chris Felton |
| Abstract: | Increases in mental health diagnoses and suicidal behaviors in Emergency Departments are often cited as evidence of an accelerating child mental health crisis. We ask whether trends in ED visits provide an accurate picture of changes in U.S. child mental health. These measures have been profoundly affected by changing conventions about screening, defining, and coding of mental illness. We conclude that child mental health has been deteriorating, but not by the startling magnitudes suggested by jumps and trends in some measures. Although reported suicidal behaviors rose 233% from 2006-2021, the true rise in mental health disorders is less than 30-50%. |
| JEL: | I1 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33550 |
| By: | Pragya Kakani; Simone Matecna; Amitabh Chandra |
| Abstract: | We measure whether expert patients – those trained as physicians and nurses – have fewer emergency department visits and the reasons for these differences. Relative to similar patients physicians and nurses had 19.8% and 5.1% fewer ED visits, principally due to fewer avoidable visits. The differences in avoidable visits between physicians and other patients were largest for diagnoses commonly requiring prescriptions, which physicians often self-prescribed. Our results suggest that improving access to prescriptions for acute symptoms, more than improving patient education, may reduce avoidable health care. |
| JEL: | I0 I10 I11 I12 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33573 |
| By: | Francesco Chiocchio; Jeremy Greenwood; Nezih Guner; Karen Kopecky |
| Abstract: | At the onset of COVID-19, U.S. labor-force participation dropped by about 3 percentage points and remained below pre-pandemic levels three years later. Recovery varied across states, with slower rebounds in those more affected by the pre-pandemic opioid crisis, as measured by age-adjusted opioid overdose death rates. An event study shows that a one-standard-deviation increase in pre-COVID opioid death rates corresponds to a 0.9 percentage point decline in post-COVID labor participation. The result is not driven by differences in overall health between states. The effect of prior opioid exposure had a more significant impact on individuals without a college degree. The slow recovery in states with more opioid exposure was characterized by an increase in individuals who are not in the labor force due to disability. |
| JEL: | I12 I14 J11 J12 J21 |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33717 |
| By: | Ashvin Gandhi; Maggie Shi |
| Abstract: | Governments and firms often employ soft spending limits to restrict overspending while still allowing exceptions on a case-by-case basis. This paper studies a Medicare policy which capped per-patient physical therapy spending, with exceptions for patients with documented medical need. The cap reduced spending by 8 percent without harming patient health, with the targeting improvements driven by Medicare discretion in granting exceptions rather than improved provider screening. However, the documentation requirement also introduced horizontal inequity: conditional on need, lower-income and minority patients were more likely to be screened out, as they tended to see providers with poorer documentation practices. |
| JEL: | H30 H51 I1 I13 I18 |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33722 |
| By: | Rebecca Dizon-Ross; Ariel D. Zucker |
| Abstract: | Personalizing policies can theoretically increase their effectiveness. However, personalization is difficult when individual types are unobservable and the preferences of policymakers and individuals are not aligned, which could cause individuals to misreport their type. Mechanism design offers a strategy to overcome this issue: offer an “incentive-compatible” menu of policy choices designed to induce participants to select the variant intended for their type. Using a field experiment that personalized incentives for exercise among 6, 800 adults with diabetes and hypertension in urban India, we show that personalizing with an incentive-compatible choice menu substantially improves program performance, increasing the treatment effect of incentives on exercise by 80% without increasing program costs relative to a one-size-fits-all benchmark. Mechanism design achieves similar performance to personalizing with an extensive set of observable variables, but without the high data requirements or the risk that participants might manipulate their observables. |
| JEL: | D82 I12 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33624 |
| By: | Elena Prager; Nicholas Tilipman |
| Abstract: | Recent policy proposals seek to regulate out-of-network hospital prices. We study how such regulation affects equilibrium prices, network formation, and hospital exit. We estimate a structural model of insurer-hospital bargaining that allows for out-of-network transactions between non-contracting parties. These transactions generate a notion of exit by rendering hospitals unprofitable under some regulations. Estimation relies on a novel measure of out-of-network prices. We find that reducing out-of-network prices would also lower negotiated prices, but potentially at the cost of narrower hospital networks. Aggressive regulation could induce substantial hospital exit, but only under the restrictive assumption that negotiators cannot anticipate the exits. |
| JEL: | C78 I11 L13 |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33727 |
| By: | Joshua D. Gottlieb; Neale Mahoney; Kevin Rinz; Victoria Udalova |
| Abstract: | Healthcare employment has grown more than twice as fast as the labor force since 1980, overtaking retail trade to become the largest industry by employment in 2009. We document key facts about the rise of healthcare jobs. Earnings for healthcare workers have risen nearly twice as fast as those in other industries, with relatively large increases in the middle and upper-middle parts of the earnings distribution. Healthcare workers have remained predominantly female, with increases in the share of female doctors offsetting increases in the shares of male nurses and aides. Despite a few high-profile examples to the contrary, regions experiencing manufacturing job losses have not systematically reinvented themselves by pivoting from ``manufacturing to meds.'' |
| JEL: | I11 J21 J31 J44 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33583 |
| By: | Virat Agrawal; Richard K. Green; Neeraj Sood; Christopher M. Whaley |
| Abstract: | Housing expense inflation has historically averaged an annual growth rate of 3.0 percent. However, starting in early 2021 housing expense inflation surged, peaking at 8.2 percent by March 2023. Substance use also increased concurrently. This study investigates the impact of rising housing expenses on household purchases of alcohol and tobacco. The relationship is ambiguous: higher housing costs could reduce spending on these items due to constrained disposable income or increase them as a coping mechanism for financial stress. To identify the effects of housing expense inflation we utilize exogenous variation in county-level housing regulations and exposure to housing expense inflation, which affects renters and homeowners differently as homeowners with fixed-rate mortgages are less impacted. In particular, we employ a difference-in-difference-in-difference (DDD) approach, comparing changes in alcohol and tobacco purchases between renters and homeowners, before and after the housing expense surge, across counties with varying housing regulation levels. Our findings reveal that a 1-unit increase in our housing regulation index—equivalent to moving from the 10th to the 90th percentile—correlates with an additional $28.70 (about 15.6 percent) monthly increase in out-of-pocket housing expenses per household member for renters relative to homeowners between 2019 and 2022. This increase is also associated with a 26 to 38 percent rise in financial difficulties among renters compared to homeowners. Furthermore, the same regulatory increase corresponds to a 15.2 percent rise in monthly beer purchases per member among renters relative to homeowners in 2022 compared to 2019, driven largely by low-cost beer. However, we find no significant effect on monthly household purchases of liquor, wine, or cigarettes. |
| JEL: | D1 G5 I1 I12 I3 R28 |
| Date: | 2025–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33534 |
| By: | Costa-Font, Joan; Raut, Nilesh |
| Abstract: | We examine the impact of the Long-Term Care Insurance Partnership (LTCIP) program—a collaborative initiative between the state-level Medicaid programs and private health insurance companies designed to promote private long-term care insurance (LTCI)—on insurance ownership and Medicaid utilization. We draw on individual-level longitudinal data and employ a difference-in-differences (DD) design adjusted for the staggered implementation of the program between 2005 and 2018. Our results suggest that the rollout of the LTCIP program led to a 1.54 percentage point (pp) (14.7%) increase in LTCI ownership and a 0.82 pp (13.3%) reduction in Medicaid uptake. Our estimates suggest that these combined effects led to an approximate average cost saving of $74 per 65-year-old participant. These findings are explained by a certain degree of substitution between LTCIP and traditional LTCI contracts, ultimately postponing the use of Medicaid benefits. |
| Keywords: | long-term care partnerships; long-term care insurance; Medicaid; United States; difference-in-differences |
| JEL: | I18 H11 H24 |
| Date: | 2025–03–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:127078 |
| By: | Marc-Antoine Jacob (LIRSA - Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de recherche en sciences de l'action - CNAM - Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers [CNAM], CNAM - Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers [CNAM]) |
| Abstract: | Public hospitals are facing two pernicious challenges: increased budgetary constraints on the one hand, and exacerbated absenteeism and scarcity of paramedical human resources on the other. Healthcare managers are faced with this dual challenge, which they must manage by taking into account two institutional logics in tension: the care logic and the managerial logic. We examine how the use of workforce management tools can enable managers to manage this institutional pluralism in public hospitals, and these contradictory issues. It appears that the instrumental uses of these tools enable managers to embody the managerial logic alone, while the socio-political uses of these tools, implemented in multi-professional discussion forums, promote the hybridization of institutional logics. We detail the conditions that foster the hybridization of institutional logics through the uses of management tools, and the spaces in which it can occur. |
| Keywords: | management tools institutional pluralism uses public hospital hybridization, management tools, institutional pluralism, uses, public hospital, hybridization |
| Date: | 2025–03–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05017980 |
| By: | Pinilla Alarcón, Diana (Universidad de los Andes) |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the impact of narrow changes in temperature exposure during pregnancy on maternal morbidity in Colombia. Using administrative individual-level health service records and high-resolution daily weather data at the municipality level, I find that the rate of healthcare utilization during pregnancy and delivery increases monotonically with temperature. Services like hospitalizations increase by 1.69% with each additional day above 29◦C compared to the reference bin of [21, 23)◦C. In contrast, services requiring less time under direct observation or that are primarily outpatient (i.e., emergency room visits, consultations, and medical procedures) increase by 1%. In a two-month exposure window, each additional day in the highest temperature bin is associated with nearly a 2% increase in hospitalizations, which is double the impact observed for other health services. Women from low socioeconomic conditions and living in rural areas seem to be more affected by temperature shocks, especially in high-level morbidity outcomes, like hospitalizations. |
| Keywords: | temperature; climate change; maternal health; pregnancy |
| JEL: | I10 I12 I18 Q50 Q54 |
| Date: | 2025–05–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:021370 |
| By: | Konstantin Kunze |
| Abstract: | This paper exploits variation resulting from a series of federal and state Medicaid expansions between 1977 and 2017 to estimate the effects of children's increased access to public health insurance on the labor market outcomes of their mothers. The results imply that the extended Medicaid eligibility of children leads to positive labor supply responses at the extensive and intensive margins of single mothers and to negative labor supply responses at the extensive margin of married mothers. The analysis of mechanisms suggests that extended children's Medicaid eligibility positively affects take-up of Medicaid and health of children. |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2504.10215 |
| By: | Finnegan, Amy |
| Abstract: | Unmet need for family planning puts women at risk for unintended pregnancies; however, unmet need is made up of both women who have never used a method of family planning and those who have used a modern method but subsequently discontinued. Understanding patterns of discontinuation can inform policies and practices to reduce unmet need for family planning and therefore promote gender equity and maternal and infant health. In this paper, we explore seasonal contraceptive patterns in Kenya, Uganda, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Nepal using the Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) contraceptive calendar from the most recent survey in each country prior to Covid-19. Specifically, we investigate contraceptive discontinuation associated with major holidays – times when women may travel or health facilities may close. Even after accounting for recall bias, major holidays appear to drive contraceptive discontinuation in a subset of countries and could serve as a powerful point for intervention. |
| Date: | 2025–05–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:xhpyb_v1 |
| By: | Adeline L. Delavande; Areeba Shahab; Javed Younas; Basit Zafar |
| Abstract: | We evaluate the effectiveness of randomized interventions aimed at alleviating psychological barriers (maternal stress and difficulty visualizing the future) and addressing information frictions on early childhood immunization uptake in a sample of 2, 145 mothers of infants in Pakistan. A phone-delivered intervention providing psychological support and visualization techniques to mothers increases the total number of vaccines received by young children by 0.3, or 7% of the control mean, one year after baseline. The impacts are larger for lower-income households. We also find that the intervention improves maternal knowledge, attitudes, and perceived returns to vaccination, highlighting the role of psychological support in shaping health behaviors. However, supplementing this intervention with vaccination-related information from influencers does not yield additional benefits. |
| JEL: | I1 J10 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33559 |
| By: | Kris Wain; Debra P Ritzwoller; Marcelo Coca Perraillon |
| Abstract: | Health plan deductibles are a form of cost-sharing that require patients to pay out-of-pocket before insurance pays for benefits. Deductible plans have become increasingly common in the United Sates to mitigate escalating healthcare costs. Quantifying the impact of increased cost-sharing from deductibles on utilization is a challenging empirical question because individuals and employers self-select into plans with deductibles. We evaluated the impact of cost-sharing in plans with deductibles by leveraging an accidental injury to a family member as an instrumental variable that strongly predicted the non-injured family member reaching their deductible maximum, which resulted in a reduction in cost-sharing. Our outcome measures examined utilization subject to cost-sharing as compared to utilization exempt from cost-sharing. Using data from the same healthcare system to control for quality and provider network, we found that reaching the deductible increased emergency department (ED) utilization by 10.0 percentage points (pp). Nearly one-quarter of the increased ED utilization was potentially avoidable. Wellness visits not subject to cost-sharing decreased by 5.7 pp. Results were similar for high-deductible plans and for families meeting their maximum out-of-pocket amount. These findings provide causal evidence that individuals enrolled in plans with deductibles change utilization patterns after an exogenous reduction in cost-sharing. |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2503.19992 |
| By: | Piyush Akimitsu |
| Abstract: | This study explores Telehealth Parity Laws (TPLs) and their heterogeneous treatment effects by policy type on outpatient utilization and Medicare costs, considering broadband and licensure infrastructure. State-specific legislative framings create varied Price (physician reimbursement) and Cost (consumer expense) control combinations within a quasi-experimental design. Partial equilibrium causal estimates reveal negligible impacts on Medicare enrollment, indicating that Medicare cost shifts stem purely from outpatient utilization changes. Broadband access correlates with increased preventable hospital stays but lower Medicare costs and enrollment. Additionally, the Interstate Licensure Compact increases enrollment among the aged and disabled, possibly addressing previously unmet demand for healthcare services. |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2504.14784 |
| By: | Fiona Burlig; Amir Jina; Anant Sudarshan |
| Abstract: | Over 2 billion people lack clean drinking water. Existing solutions face high costs (piped water) or low demand (point-of-use chlorine). Using a 60, 000 household cluster-randomized experiment we test an increasingly popular alternative: decentralized treatment and home delivery of clean water to the rural poor. At low prices, take-up exceeds 90 percent, sustained throughout the experiment. High prices reduce take-up but are privately profitable. Self-reported health measures improve. We experimentally recover revealed-preference measures of valuation. Willingness-to-pay is several times higher than prior indirect estimates; willingness-to-accept is larger and exceeds marginal cost. On a cost-per-disability-adjusted-life-year basis, free water delivery regimes appear highly cost-effective. |
| JEL: | O13 Q25 Q53 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33557 |
| By: | Huang, Haifang (University of Alberta, Department of Economics); Helliwell, John (University of British Columbia); Norton, Max (University of British Columbia) |
| Abstract: | We find a large decline in the life satisfaction of younger Canadians - those below age 35 - since the mid-2010s in the Gallup World Poll (GWP), several different themes of the Canadian General Social Surveys (GSS), and the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS), often driven by 2-3-fold increases in misery (very low responses) and around 30% declines in very high responses. The declines appear in happiness levels and relative to older Canadians. The timing of the decline is consistent across surveys. In all cases the downward trend started before COVID-19 and continued during the pandemic. In terms of birth cohorts, the declines are the most dramatic for Gen Z. But Gen Y follows not far behind. Boomers, in contrast, stand out in their resilience. The decline in younger Canadians’ subjective well-being has turned the “midlife crisis, ” captured by a U shape in the age-happiness relationship and frequently seen in earlier Canadian data, into a crisis for the young: most surveys now feature a monotonically rising age curve, with happiness starting low and rising until the retirement age. |
| Keywords: | subjective well-being; generation; demographics |
| JEL: | E24 H23 J64 J68 |
| Date: | 2025–05–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:albaec:2025_003 |
| By: | Anna Matysiak (Interdisciplinary Center for Labour Market and Family Dynamics (LabFam), University of Warsaw); Lucas van der Velde (Interdisciplinary Center for Labour Market and Family Dynamics (LabFam), University of Warsaw; Institute of Statistics and Demography, Warsaw School of Economics; Group for Research in Applied Economics, GRAPE) |
| Abstract: | We examine the short-term fertility effects of Poland’s 2020 Constitutional Tribunal (CT) ruling, which declared abortions on the grounds of fetal anomaly unconstitutional. The decision effectively outlawed nearly all legal abortions, as over 97% had been conducted on this ground. Using vital statistics and interrupted time series analysis, we find a significant and immediate decline in births of around 6.6%. The fertility response was strongest among younger women and first-time mothers, suggesting heightened sensitivity to the increased risks of pregnancy. Contrary to expectations, highly educated women did not significantly adjust fertility, likely due to greater access to abortion services abroad. Our findings demonstrate that abortion bans may lower fertility when they substantially increase the perceived costs and risks of childbearing, particularly in societies with widespread contraceptive use. These results provide insights relevant to current debates in the United States, where overturning of Roe v. Wade may also reshape fertility patterns. |
| Keywords: | abortion, reproductive rights, fertility, Poland |
| JEL: | J10 J11 J12 J13 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:war:wpaper:2025-12 |
| By: | Noam Angrist; Sarah Kabay; Dean Karlan; Lincoln Lau; Kevin Wong |
| Abstract: | Children spend most of their time at home in their early years, yet efforts to promote human capital at home in many low- and middle-income settings remain limited. We conduct a randomized controlled trial to evaluate an intervention which encourages parents and caregivers to foster human capital accumulation among their children between ages 3 and 5, with a focus on math and phonics skills. Children gain 0.52 and 0.51 standard deviations relative to the control group on math and phonics tests, respectively (p |
| JEL: | I20 |
| Date: | 2025–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33574 |
| By: | Castillo Cuello, María (Universidad de los Andes); Suescún Salazar, Cecilia (Universidad de los Andes); Weintraub, Michael (Universidad de los Andes); Marín-Llanes, Lucas (Northwestern University) |
| Abstract: | Does regulating cannabis markets reduce crime? We conduct a systematic review and metaanalysis of causal inference studies addressing this question. Applying strict inclusion criteria to an initial pool of 31 studies, we synthesize estimates from nine papers. We propose a formal framework linking cannabis regulations to crime through reductions in illicit market size, criminal rents, and violence associated with illegal contract enforcement, as well as through increased police resource reallocation and public health interventions. Our meta-analytic estimates show that cannabis regulations—especially for medical use—reduce overall crime, with effects concentrated in violent offenses. We also document heterogeneity by publication status, suggesting potential publication bias. These findings imply that reforms to cannabis regulations may reduce violence and weaken organized crime. |
| Keywords: | meta-analysis; cannabis; crime; drugs; security |
| JEL: | H41 H75 K14 K23 K42 |
| Date: | 2025–05–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:021369 |
| By: | David Bardey (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Philippe de Donder (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Vera Zaporozhets (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - UT - Université de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | We review the medico-economic literature assessing the economic value of diagnostic and prognostic tests, with a focus on innovative and, more specifically, companion tests. Our analysis begins with a summary of systematic reviews that provide a descriptive synthesis of existing findings rather than conducting quantitative meta-analyses. These reviews reveal no consistent evidence that such tests outperform traditional approaches, such as pharmaceutical interventions. However, the cost-effectiveness of these tests, often measured in cost per QALY (Quality-Adjusted Life Year) gained, exhibits considerable heterogeneity. Notably, some genetic testing procedures may demonstrate superior performance compared to non-genetic alternatives. We then examine the economic implications of imperfect test features, exploring strategies to optimize their accuracy levels and integrating these considerations into the assessment of their economic value. Lastly, we review recent methodological and empirical studies employing these approaches, highlighting advancements in evaluating the economic impact of diagnostic and prognostic tests. |
| Keywords: | Genetic tests, Innovative tests, Companion tests, Health Technology Assessment (HTA), Personalized medicine, Receiver-operator (ROC) curve, Incremental cost-effectiveness ration (ICER) |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05024927 |
| By: | Reader, Mary; Portes, Jonathan; Patrick, Ruth |
| Abstract: | We study the fertility effects of restricting child-related social assistance to the first two children in the family. As of 2017, all third and subsequent children born on or after 6 April 2017 in the UK were made ineligible for approximately 3000 GBP of means-tested child benefits per year. Using a triple difference and regression discontinuity design, we leverage administrative births microdata to identify the impact of the two-child limit on higher-order births. We find little to no decline in higher-order fertility among low-income families, with our estimates indicating at most small elasticities relative to the literature. |
| Keywords: | fertility; family size; social assistance; welfare reform |
| JEL: | J18 H53 J13 H31 |
| Date: | 2025–03–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:127503 |
| By: | Buhmann, Mara (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany); Pohlan, Laura (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany); Roth, Duncan (Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, Germany) |
| Abstract: | "This paper exploits that the Covid-19 pandemic came as an unexpected shock that temporarily reduced the ratio of vacancies to seekers. We use this unique setting to understand the importance of job opportunities for the impact of unemployment on workers’ careers. Compared to individuals who became unemployed under more benign conditions, we find greater and lasting adverse effects on earnings. We provide evidence that lower job opportunities lead unemployed individuals to take up jobs that are further down the occupation-specific wage distribution. Finally, we substantiate the importance of job prospects by using exogenous variation in the pandemic’s effect on occupations." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) |
| Keywords: | IAB-Open-Access-Publikation |
| JEL: | J23 J62 J64 |
| Date: | 2025–05–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iab:iabdpa:202507 |
| By: | Mitsuyo ANDO; Kazunobu HAYAKAWA; Shujiro URATA; Kenta YAMANOUCHI |
| Abstract: | This study empirically investigates how the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, as measured by mobility restriction measures, affected the quarterly performance of Japanese overseas affiliates, mainly from the perspective of sales, spanning from 2020 to 2022. In particular, we highlight the role of intra-firm networks, specifically the presence of nearby affiliates within the same parent company, in mitigating the adverse effects of COVID-19. Our major findings can be summarized as follows. First, the negative impact of local mobility-restricting measures was much larger for total sales and investment than for employment, especially during the initial phase of the pandemic. Although the negative effect was significantly larger for total sales, it took a longer time for investment to recover. Second, on average, affiliates with sibling affiliates in the same region did not necessarily play a role in mitigating the adverse effects and experienced a greater negative effect from local restriction measures in some cases. Third, such a negative effect was much smaller or disappeared for affiliates with sibling affiliates that are located in nearby countries experiencing less restrictive measures, particularly in the initial period of the shock. |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:25040 |
| By: | Bo Wu |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the causal relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and wage levels, aiming to provide a quantified assessment of the impact. While no significant evidence is found for long-term effects, the analysis reveals a statistically significant positive influence on wages in the short term, particularly within a one-year horizon. Contrary to common expectations, the results suggest that COVID-19 may have led to short-run wage increases. Several potential mechanisms are proposed to explain this counterintuitive outcome. The findings remain robust when controlling for other macroeconomic indicators such as GDP, considered here as a proxy for aggregate demand. The paper also addresses issues of external validity in the concluding section. |
| Date: | 2025–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2504.10554 |