The kids are alright - labour market effects of unexpected parental hospitalisations in the Netherlands
Publication date: Available online 12 December 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Sara Rellstab, Pieter Bakx, Pilar García-Gómez, Eddy van DoorslaerAbstractUnexpected negative health shocks of a parent may reduce adult children's labour supply via informal caregiving and stress-induced mental health problems. We link administrative data on labour market outcomes, hospitalisations and family relations for the full Dutch working age population for the years 1999-2008 to evaluate the effect of an unexpected parental hospitalisation on the probability of employment and on conditional earnings. Using an event s...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - December 14, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Thank goodness for stickiness: Unravelling the evolution of income-related health inequalities before and after the Great Recession in Europe
Publication date: Available online 9 December 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Max Coveney, Pilar García-Gómez, Eddy Van Doorslaer, Tom Van OurtiAbstractThe Great Recession in Europe sparked concerns that the crisis would lead to increased income related health inequalities (IRHI). Did this come to pass, and what role, if any, did government transfers play in the evolution of these inequalities? Motivated by these questions, this paper seeks to (i) study the evolution of IRHI during the crisis, and (ii) decompose these evolutions to examine the separate roles of government versus market transfers. Using ...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - December 9, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: December 2019Source: Journal of Health Economics, Volume 68Author(s): (Source: Journal of Health Economics)
Source: Journal of Health Economics - December 4, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Neonatal health of parents and cognitive development of children
Publication date: Available online 30 November 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Claus Thustrup Kreiner, Hans Henrik SievertsenAbstractIt is well-established that neonatal health is a strong predictor of socioeconomic outcomes later in life, but does neonatal health also predict key outcomes of the next generation? This paper documents a surprisingly strong relationship between birth weight of parents and school test scores of their children. The association between maternal birth weight and child test scores corresponds to 50–80 percent of the association between the child's own birth weight and test sco...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - December 2, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Another Look at Returns to Birthweight
Publication date: Available online 27 November 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Maruyama Shiko, Heinesen EskilAbstractWe revisit the causal effect of birthweight. Because variation in birthweight in developed countries primarily stems from variation in gestational age rather than intrauterine growth restriction, we depart from the widely-used twin fixed-effects estimator and employ an instrumental variable – the diagnosis of placenta previa, which provides exogenous variation in gestation length. We find protective effects of additional birthweight against infant mortality and health capital loss, such a...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - November 28, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Does Education Reduce Teen Fertility? Evidence from Compulsory Schooling Laws
Publication date: Available online 22 November 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Philip DeCicca, Harry KrashinskyAbstractWhile less-educated women are more likely to give birth as teenagers, there is scant evidence the relationship is causal. We investigate this possibility using variation in compulsory schooling laws (CSLs) to identify the impact of formal education on teen fertility at specific ages for a large sample of women drawn from multiple waves of the Canadian Census. We find large negative impacts of education on births for young women aged seventeen and eighteen, but less systematic evidence of ...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - November 23, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
A double safety net? Understanding interactions between disability benefits, formal assistance, and family support
Publication date: Available online 21 November 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Stephanie RennaneAbstractWhile the main insurance sources for individuals with disability are understood, less is known about how family support interacts with federal disability benefits. Using the Health and Retirement Study matched to administrative records, I examine how disability benefits affect family support by comparing accepted and rejected disability applicants before and after benefit receipt. Receipt of disability insurance increases the probability of receiving any assistance from children by 18 percent and more t...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - November 22, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Birth Weight and Infant Health for Multiple Births
Publication date: Available online 18 November 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Martin SaavedraAbstractI provide plausibly causal estimates of the effect of birth weight using data from the universe of twins, triplets, and quadruplets born between 1995-2000 in the United States. Infants from higher-order multiple births have lower birth weights, but experience smaller reductions in infant health when they are low birth weight. OLS estimates using a rich set of controls show that this result holds when comparing singletons to multiples and when analyzing historical data from before the widespread use of in ...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - November 19, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
The Impact of Health Insurance on Stockholding: A Regression Discontinuity approach
Publication date: Available online 16 November 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Dimitris Christelis, Dimitris Georgarakos, Anna Sanz-de-GaldeanoAbstractEconomic theory predicts that a reduction in background risk should induce financial risk-taking, particularly for individuals with low stock market participation costs. Hence, health insurance coverage could affect financial risk-taking by offsetting health-related background risk. We use a regression discontinuity design to examine whether Medicare eligibility at age 65 increases stockholding in the US and find that it does so for those with college educa...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - November 17, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Child Sleep and Mother Labour Market Outcomes
Publication date: Available online 15 November 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Joan Costa-Font, Sarah FlecheAbstractWe show that sleep deprivation exerts strong negative effects on mothers’ labour market performance. To isolate variations in maternal sleep, we exploit unique variations in child sleep disruption using a UK panel dataset that follows mother-child pairs through time. We find that sleeping one hour less per night on average significantly decreases maternal labour force participation, the number of hours worked and household income. We identify one mechanism driving the effects, namely the i...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - November 17, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
The Treatment Decision under Uncertainty: The Effects of Health, Wealth and the Probability of Death
Publication date: Available online 16 November 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Stefan FelderAbstractMedical treatment reduces diagnostic risk, increases therapeutic risk and lowers the probability of death. This paper analyzes the effects of initial health, wealth and the probability of death on the propensity to treat under diagnostic and therapeutic risk. It shows that treatment propensity increases with the probability of death, but can decrease with the severity of illness. The effect of wealth depends on the cross-derivative of the utility function with respect to health and wealth. These results hav...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - November 17, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Spatial competition and quality: Evidence from the English family doctor market
Publication date: Available online 17 October 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Hugh Gravelle, Dan Liu, Carol Propper, Rita SantosAbstractWe examine whether family doctor firms in England respond to local competition by increasing their quality. We measure quality in terms of clinical performance and patient-reported satisfaction to capture its multi-dimensional nature. We use a panel covering 8 years for over 8000 English general practices. We measure competition as the number of rival doctors within a small distance and control for a large number of potential confounders. We find that increases in local c...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - October 18, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Convenient primary care and emergency hospital utilisation
Publication date: December 2019Source: Journal of Health Economics, Volume 68Author(s): Edward W. PinchbeckAbstractParticipation and utilisation decisions lie at the heart of many public policy questions. I contribute new evidence by using hospital records to examine how access to primary care services affects utilisation of hospital Emergency Departments in England. Using a natural experiment in the roll out of services, I first show that access to primary care reduces Emergency Department visits. Additional strategies then allow me to separate descriptively four aspects of primary care access: proximity, opening hours, n...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - October 10, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Temperature and mental health: Evidence from the spectrum of mental health outcomes
Publication date: December 2019Source: Journal of Health Economics, Volume 68Author(s): Jamie T. Mullins, Corey WhiteAbstractThis paper characterizes the link between ambient temperatures and a broad set of mental health outcomes. We find that higher temperatures increase emergency department visits for mental illness, suicides, and self-reported days of poor mental health. Specifically, cold temperatures reduce negative mental health outcomes while hot temperatures increase them. Our estimates reveal no evidence of adaptation, instead the temperature relationship is stable across time, baseline climate, air conditioning p...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - October 5, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
The Unexpected Consequences of Generic Entry
Publication date: Available online 1 October 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Micael Castanheira, Carmine Ornaghi, Georges SiotisAbstractGeneric drugs are sold at a fraction of the original brand price. Yet, generic entry typically produces a drop in the quantity market share of the molecule losing exclusivity. This effect is economically and statistically significant for a large dataset covering hundreds of prescription drugs sold in the US during the period 1994Q1-2003Q4. This paper proposes the first systematic analysis of what appears to be a market anomaly.We propose a model to characterize the market...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - October 2, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
