Health Economics Commons^™

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

Three Essays In The Economics Of Child Development And Health Inequities, Travis Whitacre

Economics Theses and Dissertations

In chapter 1, I assess the long-term education and labor market effects of missed ADHD diagnoses. Doing so is challenging for two reasons. First, a person's true ADHD status is unobserved; only their diagnosed status is known. Second, even if diagnostic errors are observed, they are likely akin to non-classical misclassification errors and therefore endogenous. To overcome these empirical challenges, I use and extend on a partial observability model with genetic data from Add Health. Through the lens of the partial observability model. I recover an estimate of true ADHD status, and the probability of underdiagnosis. Then, I estimate their …

The Expected Risks And Exacerbations Of Poverty, Mental Health Disorders, And Maternal Mortality From Abortion Bans: A Comparative Literature Analysis, Daniel J. Francisco

All Master's Theses

Background. Early termination of a pregnancy (hereinafter referred to as an “abortion”) has been debated in the United States (U.S.) for decades, without much regard to the negative outcomes that forced pregnancies have for those assigned female at birth regarding poverty, mental health and maternal mortality. In 1973, access to safe abortions was protected so long that the procedure was done within the legal gestational period and/or was necessary for the health and safety of the patient (Blackmun, 1972). Unfortunately, in 2022, the Supreme Court took that protection away and made it legal for states to determine the reproductive rights …

Freedom To Choose: The Economic Impact Of Reduced Abortion Access On Women’S Labor Market Outcomes, Zaara A. Masud

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This project aims to look at the economic impact of a reduction in abortion access on women's labor market outcomes. To do this, I use Sen and Nussbaum's capabilities approach to analyze the different capabilities that would be impacted and find that women's educational attainment, income, and labor force participation rates are all lower without access to abortion.

Essays In Applied Microeconomics, Joshua C. Martin

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The first chapter examines the role that same-sex marriage legalization had on the number of adoptions of children from foster care in the United States. We do so by employing a synthetic difference-in-differences estimator which leverages both the differential timing of these laws across states and the subsequent wave of state-level legal protections which give foster-care agencies the right to deny service to same-sex couples based on religiously-held beliefs. Using highly detailed, county-level data of nearly 20 million children in the foster care system from 1995-2020, our findings reveal that same-sex marriage legalization led to a 3.8%-5.9% increase in the …

Essays On Disability And The Labour Market, Robert Geoffrey Millard

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My dissertation consists of three chapters about the effects of disability and disability policy.

The second chapter analyzes the variation in labour market outcomes across disabilities by representing disability as a bundle of characteristics. Rich with information on the characteristics of a disabling condition, I use the Participation and Activity Limitation Survey to compare the relative importance of each {characteristic} and their interactions on employment, wages, hours worked, and annual employment income. The disability {characteristics} include the type of activity limitation, number of limitations, timing of onset, severity, and persistence. I find substantial cross-sectional variation in labour supply, wages, and …

Fertility Trends And The Rising Costs Of Children, Sarita O'Neill

Undergraduate Research Awards

"From 1958 to 2021, fertility rates in the United States have declined from 3.5 births per woman to 1.8 births per woman (macrotrends). Declining fertility is a common trend in developed countries, specifically for countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Fertility is crucial to workforce replacement, so declining fertility rates have a direct impact on GDP. In the United States, the working-age population growth rate has fallen below the total population growth rate. Workforce replacement is the ratio of working-age people entering the workforce to retired age people exiting the workforce. Thispaper studies the relationship between …

The Impacts Of Public Policies On Health-Related Outcomes, Yaxiang Song

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three chapters that study how public policies affect health-related outcomes in China. The first two papers examine the impacts of the country’s Critical Illness Insurance program on health-related outcomes. The third paper studies the effects of maternal education on children’s early childhood health outcomes and cognitive skills.

The first chapter evaluates the impact of a recent social health insurance benefits expansion program on middle-aged and elderly individuals. In 2012, China launched a Critical Illness Insurance (CII) program, which aimed to reduce out-of-pocket costs for individuals covered by the government’s health insurance programs. This chapter utilizes the …

Essays On Evaluating The Effects Of The Child Tax Credit, Hyein Kang

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three essays understanding how the Child Tax Credit (CTC) affects maternal labor supply, maternal health, and children’s outcomes. The CTC was implemented in 1998 tax year and has been expanded multiple times throughout the past 20 years. Chapter 1 examines the effect of the CTC on the labor supply of single and married mothers using the numerous policy reforms in the credit generosity and eligibility criteria since its inception in 1997. I use variation in the simulated benefits for a nationally representative sample to estimate the labor supply response at the extensive and intensive margins. Using …

The Job Guarantee As It Relates To People With Disabilities, Tyler Christopher Emerson

Senior Projects Spring 2022

We accept unemployment as an inevitability in our capitalist economy even when it is purportedly functioning at full capacity. Some economists propose that the government could directly intervene in the labor market to meet the peoples’ demand for jobs. Work in modern America is a central aspect of participation in society that directly impacts individuals’ identities. Unemployment is, therefore, a key mechanism of social exclusion. The Federal Job Guarantee seeks to provide work directly for the unemployed with work that serves the public good.

People with disabilities disproportionately suffer from unemployment, underemployment, and often leave the workforce entirely. The majority …

Long-Term Effects Of In Utero Exposure To “The Year Without A Summer”, Hamid Noghanibehambari, Farzaneh Noghani, Nahid Tavassoli, Mostafa Toranji

Economic and Business Review

This paper uses the aftermath of the great Tambora eruption in 1815 as a natural experiment to explore the long-term effects of a nutritional shock during prenatal development. The volcanic explosion of Tambora formed substantial ash columns which hampered sunlight, cooled down the surface temperature, reduced the length of the growing season, and led to a severe harvest failure during summer and winter of 1816 in Europe and northeastern states of America. US decennial census 1850 provides evidence that cohorts in utero during the climate anomaly revealed lower literacy rates, lower labor force participation rates, a fewer number of own …

The Effects Of Recent Minimum Wage Increases On Self-Reported Health In The United States, Liam Sigaud

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A sharp income-health gradient exists in the United States. Lower levels of income are associated with higher rates of mortality, morbidity, and risky health behaviors, as well as decreased access to health care. Growing evidence of a causal link between income and health suggests that government income-support policies may be an effective strategy for improving health outcomes among poor Americans. One such policy – the minimum wage – has experienced a surge in popularity in recent years. In 2019, twenty-five states and the District of Columbia increased their minimum wage, up from only eight states in 2011. Yet the literature …

Entitled To Property: Inheritance Laws, Female Bargaining Power, And Child Health In India, Plamen Nikolov, Shahadath Hossain

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Child height is a significant predictor of human capital and economic status throughout adulthood. Moreover, non-unitary household models of family behavior posit that an increase in women’s bargaining power can influence child health. We study the effects of an inheritance policy change, the Hindu Succession Act (HSA), which conferred enhanced inheritance rights to unmarried women in rural India, on child height. We find robust evidence that the HSA improved the height and weight of children. In addition, we find evidence consistent with a channel that the policy improved the women’s intrahousehold bargaining power within the household, leading to improved parental …

Concentration And Nurse Staffing Outcomes In The Healthcare Labor Market, Lizzy Crotty

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I investigate impacts to the nursing occupation from a perspective of market concentration. I measure the concentration of healthcare employment opportunities across the U.S. with a Herfindahl-Hirshman Index, finding moderate levels of concentration that vary greatly in markets with different population sizes and different locations. I use a Weighted Least Squares model to investigate how changing market concentration is affecting nurse employment. Analysis across different regions and different levels of urbanicity finds statistically insignificant heterogeneous effects with noisy zero estimates. The results are inconclusive evidence against monopsony presence in the nursing labor market.

The Case For Public Investment In Higher Pay For New York State Home Care Workers: Estimated Costs And Savings, Isaac Jabola-Carolus, Stephanie Luce, Ruth Milkman

Publications and Research

This report explores one potential solution to the mounting home care labor shortage in New York State: substantially raising wages for the state's home care workers. The analysis presents detailed projections, based on the best available data, of the economic effects of such an intervention, estimating the costs and benefits that would result. We find that public funding to raise home care wages would require significant resources, but those costs would be surpassed by the resulting savings, tax revenues, and economic spillover effects. The net economic gain would total at least $3.7 billion. Lifting wages would also help fill nearly …

Children’S Health And Maternal Work Activities, Termeh Tavangar

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I estimate the effect of poor child health on maternal labor force participation. Mothers of health-impaired children may decide not to work and stay at home to take care of their children. Alternatively, mothers may choose to enter the labor force to pay for these children’s additional resources. Which action dominates is the empirical question I answer in this paper. I control for the potential endogeneity of a child’s health status by using an instrumental variables approach. I find that if mothers have a child in poor health, the probability that the mother works is decreased by thirteen percentage points, …

The Motherhood Wage Penalty: New Evidence On Long-Run Effects And Group Heterogeneity, Vera Kratz

CMC Senior Theses

This paper seeks to establish the magnitude of the long-run motherhood wage penalty. Using data from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, I examine the difference between the real hourly wages of mothers and non-mothers in the long run. By comparing mothers to not-yet-mothers as well as never-mothers, I am able to better isolate the true wage penalty mothers face. My findings indicate that 21 to 25 years after the birth of their first child, mothers face a 31.75 percentage point wage penalty compared to non-mothers. In addition, I examine differences in the wage penalties of mothers by marital …

Writing Tips For Economics Research Papers, Plamen Nikolov

Economics Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Scholarly Pursuits: Nationally Recognized Health Expert Tony Losasso Returns To Depaul

Business Exchange

DePaul business school alumnus Tony LoSasso returned to his alma mater to launch a DePaul MBA concentration in health care markets and analytics. He is nationally recognized expert in health economics, LoSasso teaches graduate and undergraduate health economics courses. His award-winning research spans several dimensions of health and labor economics, health policy and health services.

Essays On Paid Sick Leave In The United States, Shaoying Ma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two chapters.

Chapter 1 This study estimates the causal effect of access to paid sick leave on worker mobility, by exploiting variation in the implementation of local paid sick leave mandates over time in the U.S. I use May 2004 - June 2019 Current Population Survey (CPS) basic monthly data, and by taking a Difference-in-Differences approach, I find that the local mandates significantly reduce private sector employees' monthly job turnover. This study is, to the best of my knowledge, the first to present the effect of local paid sick leave mandates in the U.S. on worker …

The Effects Of Eighth Years Of Compulsory Schooling Enforcement In Turkey, Muhammed Tumay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of two chapters that cover Education, Labor and Health Economics.

Chapter 1. Impacts of Compulsory Schooling Reform on Higher Education and Intergenerational Educational Mobility: we estimate the effects of an exogenous increase in mandatory schooling (5 years to 8 years of schooling), as a result of a change in compulsory schooling law, on higher education, potential intergenerational educational mobility, and labor market outcomes among women in Turkey. Our empirical strategy addresses a well-known identification problem where women’s years of schooling are endogenous to individual characteristics. The Law took effect in 1997, whereby girls born before January …

Essays In Applied Microeconomics, Eric Osborne-Christenson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation consists of three chapters and covers topics in applied microeconomics broadly defined as health and labor. The precise topics are varied, with their unifying thread being that they are all related to marginalized or at-risk communities. The first chapter estimates the impact of Daylight Saving Time (DST) on deaths of despair (DoD) in the United States. Using Multiple Cause-of-Death Mortality Data from the National Vital Statistics System of the National Center for Health Statistics from 1979-1988, the effect is identified in two ways: a regression discontinuity design (RDD) that exploits discrete time changes in the Spring and Fall; …

How Did Medicaid Expansion Affect The Provider Labor Market?, Aaron Wu

Honors Theses

One provision of the Affordable Care Act was to expand Medicaid eligibility for a greater number of low-income patients. The resulting increase in demand for care was largely explored, but the effect of the 2014 Medicaid expansion on the physician and advanced practitioner labor market has not been well researched by economists. Using pooled cross-sectional data from the 2010 – 2018 American Community Surveys, this paper examines whether the Medicaid expansion has caused notable changes in physician, physician assistant, and nurse practitioner hours, compensation, and overall employment. The literature shows that practices that employ nurse practitioners are far more likely …

Does Trade Reduce Infant Mortality? Evidence From Sub-Saharan Africa, Pallavi Panda

School of Business

Trade can affect the development process of a country via various direct and indirect mechanisms. Empirically, it is difficult to identify causal effects, as trade is likely to be endogenous to other socio-economic factors that also affect development. To overcome this problem, this study uses a trade policy experiment called the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) which conferred many sub-Saharan African countries largely duty-free and quota-free access to US markets. Using retrospective birth histories from Demographic and Health Survey (DHS), I develop a large micro panel dataset that spans 30 sub-Saharan African countries and carry out a within-mother variation …

Policy Impact Evaluations On Labour And Health, Junxing Chay

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This dissertation consists of three chapters that evaluate the impacts of public policies on labour and health.

The first chapter studies a wage supplement scheme in Singapore, called the Workfare Income Supplement, which targets older low-income workers. I exploit differences in maximum benefits across age and over time to find that increasing benefits generosity encourages labour market participation and selfemployment. I also find improved life satisfaction and happiness among those with low education, who are likely to be eligible for the scheme. These results suggest that wage supplements can ease some burdens of an ageing population.

The second chapter investigates …

Essays On Criminal Behaviour, Human Capital Formation, And Mental Health, Diego F. Salazar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

My thesis consists of three chapters that contribute to the study of some of the negative consequences of incarceration and their relation with the life-cycle choices of juvenile offenders.

Chapter 2 studies the causal relationship between incarceration and mental health problems. In this chapter, I use different matching estimators to identify the causal effects of incarceration over several dimensions of mental health using data from a survey of juvenile offenders, the Pathways to Desistance (PTD) survey. My findings show that being incarcerated for the first time, between 17 and 18 years old, increases depression by at least 0.18 standard deviations …

Moral Hazards And Negative Externalities Of Lifesaving Programs: How Naloxone Access Laws And Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs Affect Hiv Transmission, Jeremy Horn

CMC Senior Theses

This paper looks at naloxone access laws and prescription drug monitering programs and see how these programs affect HIV transmission and drug overdose deaths. Using an OLS regression I find that NAL reduces HIV and increases overdose deaths. I also find reducing the number of drug prescriptions increase HIV and overdose deaths because users switch to intravenous methods.

Conscientiousness, Extraversion, College Education, And Longevity Of High-Ability Individuals, Peter A. Savelyev

Arts & Sciences Articles

Using the 1922–1991 Terman Life-Cycle Study of Children with High Ability, I investigate the relationship between childhood noncognitive skills, college education, and longevity of a high-IQ population and find a strong relationship between college education and longevity for men. Conscientiousness and Extraversion are strongly related to longevity of men, even though their effects on education are, at best, weak. I demonstrate a number of behavioral mechanisms behind the estimated effects on longevity. I also find that men with higher levels of education and skills have superior health over the lifespan. For women of this historical cohort (born around 1910), who …

Essays On Child Well-Being And The Social Safety Net, Cody N. Vaughn

Theses and Dissertations--Economics

This dissertation consists of three essays examining the role of two particular social safety net programs, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), on the well-being of children from disadvantaged households. While the impact of these programs on the adults and parents of the household have been studied extensively, less is known about their effect on children. This is true for both their immediate impact on child well-being and any long-run impacts on children who grow up under these programs. Given the demonstrated importance of child well-being on later life adult outcomes, …

Essays On The Factors That Contribute To Body Mass Index, Veronica Salinas

Economics ETDs

Using diet, exercise, consumer behavior, and demographic data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), I examine the factors that contribute to body mass index (BMI) for the adult working age population. In Chapters 2 and 3, I examine how female BMI varies by race and ethnicity. In Chapter 4, I study the effect of food deserts on BMI and obesity for both males and females.

In Chapter 2, I use Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) to examine the factors that influence female BMI for the adult working age population. Results indicate 12 of the 40 covariates are strongly …