Other Economics Commons^™

Oxytocin Varies Across The Life Course In A Sex-Specific Way In A Human Subsistence Population, Abigail E. Colby, Dominik C. Jud, Valerie Baettig, Jordan S. Martin, Camila Scaff, Michael D. Gurven, Benjamin C. Trumble, Bret A. Beheim, Paul L. Hooper, Daniel K. Cummings, Hillard Kaplan, Jonathan Stieglitz, Arnulfo Cary Ista, Adrian V. Jaeggi

ESI Publications

Oxytocin, a hormone linked to reproduction and health, may mediate life-history trade-offs across the human life course. Yet, how oxytocin naturally varies with age remains poorly understood. Here, working with the Tsimane, forager-horticulturalists of lowland Bolivia, we collected the largest sample of oxytocin measurements to date (n = 1,242 samples, n = 405 individuals, age = 2 to 84 y, 51% female), and i) examined how oxytocin varies throughout the life course in females and males, and ii) investigated potential drivers of age- and sex-specific variation. Our sample provides rare insight into the relationship between oxytocin and age in a …

The Legacy Of Housing Discrimination: Asthma Disparities In California Cities, Taylor Daetz

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the effect of discriminatory housing policy on current asthma rates in California cities. This study uses boundary design and propensity score methodologies to analyze asthma-related emergency department visits in census tracts with corresponding appraisal grades from the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation maps. The results indicate significantly higher asthma burdens in grade D (redlined) census tracts compared to grade C tracts, even when controlling for present-day pollution concentrations, with historically redlined tracts experiencing an average of 26.88 additional emergency department visits per 10,000 residents. The analysis further reveals disparities between grade C and B neighborhoods, suggesting that even …

Three Essays On Education And Health Economics, Kalvin Mudrow

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The first chapter explores the impact of online education on student outcomes by comparing students pre-2020 school closures to students post-2020 school closures. Using student-level panel data from a large U.S. school district spanning 2017-2023 and two outcome variables, reading tests and end-of-level exams, I estimate the effects on different demographic groups, the dynamics of these effects over time, and how these effects differ across students ages. I find a significant decline in student performance after the move to online learning, with additional adverse effects on students who are classified as low-income, female, special education, or ELL. Mechanisms contributing to …

Natural Selection Of Immune And Metabolic Genes Associated With Health In Two Lowland Bolivian Populations, Amanda J. Lea, Angela Garcia, Jesusa Arevalo, Julien F. Ayroles, Kenneth Buetow, Steve W. Cole, Daniel Eid Rodriguez, Maguin Gutierrez, Heather M. Highland, Paul L. Hooper, Anne Justice, Thomas Kraft, Kari E. North, Jonathan Stieglitz, Hillard Kaplan, Benjamin C. Trumble, Michael Gurven

ESI Publications

A growing body of work has addressed human adaptations to diverse environments using genomic data, but few studies have connected putatively selected alleles to phenotypes, much less among underrepresented populations such as Amerindians. Studies of natural selection and genotype–phenotype relationships in underrepresented populations hold potential to uncover previously undescribed loci underlying evolutionarily and biomedically relevant traits. Here, we worked with the Tsimane and the Moseten, two Amerindian populations inhabiting the Bolivian lowlands. We focused most intensively on the Tsimane, because long-term anthropological work with this group has shown that they have a high burden of both macro and microparasites, as …

Takes Two To Tango: The Fusion Of Slow Fashion And Agroecology To Combat The Fast Fashion Industry, Sejal Krell

Undergraduate Theses, Capstones, and Recitals

Fast fashion has been around for longer than the world can remember, after all, there has always been a need for clothes. Nonetheless, it has not been until the past 50 years that fast fashion has become a titan within the industry. Many consider it to be the golden child of fashion with its low production costs, mass retailing, and low prices reaching consumers of all socioeconomic levels. However, the realities of this industry – specifically pertaining to the environment, economy, social sphere, and public health – reveal a different story, of injustice. After discussing the history and rise of …

Three Essays In Applied Urban Economics, Alexander Cardazzi

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The first chapter examines the effect of policing strategies on housing prices. Crime has been shown to negatively affect housing values. However, there is not much empirical evidence documenting the amenity value of how people are policed. Stop & Frisk was a particularly salient policing tactic employed in New York City until a judge ruled it to be unconstitutional. This chapter uses exogenous variation in Stop & Frisk behavior resulting from landmark events in a federal class action lawsuit as well as exposure to Operation Impact, a high intensity policing strategy, to explain variation in property sales. Results indicate a …

Meta Analysis Of Rct Interventions, Ayo Ellis

Master's Theses

External validity of an RCT intervention enables understanding of where interventions are successful.

Meta-analysis allows for more generalized statements to be made on the effectiveness of RCTs across countries of different geographic and national income profiles. By comparing the findings from similar studies carried out in different settings I seek to describe whether RCTs in certain sectors are more sensitive to high GDP growth or higher levels of GDP. I consider 402 health, education, and industry development RCT studies done between 1980 and 2015 in 201 countries compiled by development non-profit Aidgrade. I find no significant effect of income level …

Short-Run Health Consequences Of Retirement And Pension Benefits: Evidence From China, Plamen Nikolov, Alan Adelman

Justice & Well-Being Studies Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines the impact of the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) in China. Exploiting the staggered implementation of an NRPS policy expansion that began in 2009, we used a difference-in-difference approach to study the effects of the introduction of pension benefits on the health status, health behaviors, and healthcare utilization of rural Chinese adults age 60 and above. The results point to three main conclusions. First, in addition to improvements in self-reported health, older adults with access to the pension program experienced significant improvements in several important measures of health, including mobility, self-care, usual activities, and vision. Second, regarding …

Swimming For More Than Gold: How Swimming Participation And Success In Elite International Swimming Events Can Decrease Drowning Rates Across The World, Joshua R. Cottle

Undergraduate Economic Review

International swimming provides an opportunity for thousands of swimmers to compete at the highest level of the sport. In this paper, I argue that participation and success in these events can influence drowning rates across the world. My analysis suggests that one of the most notable negative influences on drowning rates is swimming participation in countries that have the smallest roster sizes and the lowest average income levels. My analysis shows that swimming success in the Olympics has a significant positive effect on drowning rates in countries in the middle-income brackets.

Conditional Cash Transfers And Child Health: The Case Of Malawi, Ryan F. Boone

CMC Senior Theses

This paper analyzes the impacts of the Malawi Social Cash Transfer Scheme. The goal of this paper is to help improve the design of cash transfers. First of all, I analyze whether the cash transfer positively affects child health variables despite occurring in a region with poor supply side health institutions. I find significant results for many child level variables, such as frequency of illnesses, but insignificant improvements in anthropometric measurements. Secondly, I examine whether female-headed households invest more in child health than male-headed households. The results show that the impacts of the cash transfer did not depend on the …

Does Unemployment Decrease Cancer Mortality?, Benjamin Torres Galick

Economics Honors Projects

Recent research indicates that healthier lifestyles during recessions decrease the most common U.S. mortalities, but not cancer. However, they combine specific cancer mortalities with different progressions into one, possibly obscuring cancer’s link to unemployment. This paper estimates a fixed-effects regression model on unemployment and the nine most prevalent cancers between 1988 and 2002 using state-level panel data. Five cancers and total cancer are procyclical, and suggest that unemployment affects both incidence and gestation for some cancers. Consistent with the medical literature, this paper contradicts previous economic research and suggests that behavioral factors significantly impact cancer mortality.