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Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Health Economics

Consumption Responses To In-Kind Transfers: Evidence From The Introduction Of The Food Stamp Program, Hilary Hoynes, Diane Schanzenbach Sep 2009

Consumption Responses To In-Kind Transfers: Evidence From The Introduction Of The Food Stamp Program, Hilary Hoynes, Diane Schanzenbach

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

Economists have strong theoretical predictions about how in-kind transfers, such as providing vouchers for food, impact consumption. Despite the prominence of the theory, there is little empirical work on responses to in-kind transfers, and most existing work fails to support the canonical theoretical model. We employ difference-indifference methods to estimate the impact of program introduction on food spending. Consistent with predictions, we find that food stamps reduce out-of-pocket food spending and increase overall food expenditures. We also find that households are inframarginal and respond similarly to one dollar in cash income and one dollar in food stamps.


Time Use And Food Consumption, Marianne Bertrand, Diane Schanzenbach Apr 2009

Time Use And Food Consumption, Marianne Bertrand, Diane Schanzenbach

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

No abstract provided.


Do School Lunches Contribute To Childhood Obesity?, Diane Schanzenbach Dec 2008

Do School Lunches Contribute To Childhood Obesity?, Diane Schanzenbach

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

This paper assesses whether school lunches contribute to childhood obesity. I employ two methods to isolate the causal impact of school lunches on obesity. First, using panel data, I find that children who consume school lunches are more likely to be obese than those who brown bag their lunches even though they enter kindergarten with the same obesity rates. Second, I leverage the sharp discontinuity in eligibility for reduced-price lunch to compare children just above and just below the eligibility cutoff. Students are more likely to be obese, and weigh more if they are income-eligible for reduced price school lunches.


Child Disadvantage And Obesity: Is Nurture Trumping Nature?, Patricia Anderson, Kristin Butcher, Diane Schanzenbach Dec 2008

Child Disadvantage And Obesity: Is Nurture Trumping Nature?, Patricia Anderson, Kristin Butcher, Diane Schanzenbach

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

No abstract provided.


Too Cold For A Jog? Weather, Exercise, And Socioeconomic Status, Daniel Eisenberg, Edward Okeke Dec 2008

Too Cold For A Jog? Weather, Exercise, And Socioeconomic Status, Daniel Eisenberg, Edward Okeke

Edward Okeke

This study examines how exercise responds to plausibly exogenous "price shocks," in the form of weather conditions. Most notably, we find that within cold temperature ranges, a decrease in past-month temperature causes a significant decrease in past-month exercise, and this effect is generally larger for lower education and income groups. In large part this differential by socioeconomic group appears to be due to smaller increases in indoor activity during cold weather. These results suggest that interventions and policies aiming to increase exercise participation, particularly among lower socioeconomic populations, could do so in part by increasing the availability and attractiveness of …


Grossman's Health Threshold And Retirement, Titus Galama, Arie Kapteyn, Raquel Fonseca, Pierre-Carl Michaud Dec 2008

Grossman's Health Threshold And Retirement, Titus Galama, Arie Kapteyn, Raquel Fonseca, Pierre-Carl Michaud

Titus Galama

We formulate a stylized structural model of health, wealth accumulation and retirement decisions building on the human capital framework of health provided by Grossman. We explicitly assume a functional form of the utility function and carefully account for initial conditions, which allow us to derive analytic solutions for the time paths of consumption, health, health investment, savings and retirement. We argue that the Grossman literature has been unnecessarily restrictive in assuming that health is always at Grossman’s “optimal” health level. Exploring the properties of corner solutions we find that advances in population health (health capital) can explain the paradox that …