The Impact of Unilateral Divorce on Crime

In this paper, we evaluate the impact of unilateral divorce on crime. First, using crime rates from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report program for the period 1965-1998 and differences in the timing in the introduction of the reform, we find that unilateral divorce has a positive impact on violent crime rates, with an 8% to 12% average increase for the period under consideration. Second, arrest data not only confirms the findings of a positive impact on violent crime but also shows that this impact is concentrated among those age groups (15 to 24) that are more likely to engage in these type of offenses. Specifically, for the age group 15-19, we observe an average impact over the period under analysis of 40% and 36% for murder and aggravated assault arrest rates, respectively. Disaggregating total arrest rates by race, we find that the effects are driven by the Black sub-sample. Third, using the age at the time of the divorce law reform as a second source of variation to analyze age-specific arrest rates we confirm the positive impact on the different types of violent crime as well as a positive impact for property crime rates, controlling for all confounding factors that may operate at the state-year, state age or age-year level. The results for murder arrests and for homicide rates (Supplemental Homicide Report) for the 15-24 age groups are robust with respect to specifications and specifically those that include year-state and year-age dummies. The magnitude goes from 15% to 40% depending on the specification and the age at the time of the reform.arrest rates, unilateral divorce, crime rates

The Impact of Age of Entry on Academic Progression

Using an RD-design and public educational administrative data for Chile, we study the impact of age of entry on children outcomes. Different from previous studies, we are able to track this impact on school achievements over eleven years of the school life of a cohort of students. Our results confirm previous findings that a higher age of entry not only has a positive effect on GPA and the likelihood of passing a grade but also that this impact tends to wear off over time. However, we also find that this impact on school achievement is still present eleven years after a child has started school. Moreover, we show that this decrease in the impact on GPA masks a return associated to a higher age of entry in other dimensions. First, we show that age of entry reduces the probability of being enrolled in a public school. Secondly, during secondary school, children delaying school entry are more likely to follow an academic track and we present evidence that these children are more likely to be enrolled in schools where children coming from other schools had a higher than the mean GPA in the school of origin. Finally, also explaining the decline in the impact of age of entry on school's achievements, we find evidence that age of entry is associated to an increase in the probability that a child is enrolled in a school actively engaged in cream skimming

How unilateral divorce affects children

Using U.S. Census data for the years 1960-1980, we study the impact of unilateral divorce on outcomes of children (age 6-15) and their mothers. We find that the reform increased mothers' divorce, decreased family income and increased the fraction of mothers below the poverty line. For children, we find not only negative results on investment, measured as the probability that a child goes to a private school, but also on child outcomes, measured by the likelihood of children aged 0-4 being held back in school at the time of the reform. We then analyze outcomes of the same cohorts of children 10 years later, by studying young men and women aged 16-25 using the 1970-1990 U.S. Census. We find an increase in marginality for these cohorts, measured as the probability of living in an institution (men) or the probability of being below the poverty line (women). We find that the impact in outcomes is particularly important for black children and young adults

Early Impacts of College Aid

We analyze the impact of an expansion in government-guaranteed credit for higher education in Chile on a sample of elementary and high school students. Using students who had an alternative source of funding as a control group, and administrative records before and after the reform, we present evidence that students most likely to attend college in a future are affected in different ways. First, we show that parents of students who ex ante were more likely to be credit restricted became more likely after the reform to state that their child would end up completing college. Second, we find that relaxing credit restrictions reduces the probability of dropping out of high school, specifically among top students originally enrolled in low-performance schools and low-performance students attending better schools. Third, we find that the reform led to an increase in educational sorting. Best students switch to better schools while low-performance students go to lower-ranked schools. This sorting helps to explain why we observe a decrease (increase) in GPA and an increase (decrease) in grade repetition among better (worse) students. Then, for a sample of students that were in transition from elementary to secondary school, we show that good students are more likely to enroll in a college-oriented track. Finally, using household data and birth records aggregated at the municipal level, we find, consistent with previous findings, a reduction in teen pregnancy

Development of a physiological model of human middle ear epithelium

Introduction Otitis media is an umbrella term for middle ear inflammation; ranging from acute infection to chronic mucosal disease. It is a leading cause of antimicrobial therapy prescriptions and surgery in children. Despite this, treatments have changed little in over 50 years. Research has been limited by the lack of physiological models of middle ear epithelium. Methods We develop a novel human middle ear epithelial culture using an air-liquid interface (ALI) system; akin to the healthy ventilated middle ear in vivo. We validate this using immunohistochemistry, immunofluorescence, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and membrane conductance studies. We also utilize this model to perform a pilot challenge of middle ear epithelial cells with SARS-CoV-2. Results We demonstrate that human middle ear epithelial cells cultured at an ALI undergo mucociliary differentiation to produce diverse epithelial subtypes including basal (p63+), goblet (MUC5AC+, MUC5B+), and ciliated (FOXJ1+) cells. Mature ciliagenesis is visualized and tight junction formation is shown with electron microscopy, and confirmed by membrane conductance. Together, these demonstrate this model reflects the complex epithelial cell types which exist in vivo. Following SARS-CoV-2 challenge, human middle ear epithelium shows positive viral uptake, as measured by polymerase chain reaction and immunohistochemistry. Conclusion We describe a novel physiological system to study the human middle ear. This can be utilized for translational research into middle ear diseases. We also demonstrate, for the first time under controlled conditions, that human middle ear epithelium is susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection, which has important clinical implications for safe otological surgery. Level of Evidence NA

Minimum age requirements and the role of the school choice set

Using several data sources from Chile, we study the impact of the size of the school choice set at the time of starting primary school. With that purpose, we exploit multiple cutoffs defining the minimum age at entry, which not only define when a student can start elementary school, but also the set of schools from which she/he can choose. Moreover, differences across municipalities in the composition of the schools according to these cutoffs, allow us not only to account for municipality fixed factors (educational markets) but also for differences in the characteristics between schools choosing different deadlines. That is, we compare the difference in outcomes for children living in the same municipality around the different cutoffs with those for children in other municipalities that experience a different change in the available set of schools across cutoffs (double difference in RD). We show that a larger set of schools increases the probability of starting in a better school, measured by a non-high-stakes examination. Moreover, this quasi-experimental variation reveals an important reduction in the likelihood of dropping out and a reduction in the probability that a child would switch schools during her/his school life. Secondly, for a subsample of students who have completed high school, we observe that a larger school choice set at the start of primary school increases students' chances of taking the national examination required for higher education and the likelihood of being enrolled in college

School starting age and the impact on school admission

Using administrative data for Chile, we study the impact of School Starting Age (SSA) on the characteristics of the school of first enrollment. After addressing the usual concerns of endogeneity using minimum age requirements and an RD-design, we uncover gains associated with a delay of school entry at the start of the student's school life. SSA is associated with an enrollment in a school with an approximately 0.1 standard deviations higher average in standardized test scores, an increase of approximately 0.17 years in the average education of the peers' parents, and an increase of 4 percentage points in the probability of being enrolled in a private school. The heterogeneity analysis by parents' education reveals the largest gain in the probability of enrollment in a voucher school among less-educated families. We also show that the impact on school's standardized test scores occurs among girls. This heterogeneity by parents' education and student's gender differs from that reported in previous studies