Three essays on the economics of immigration and health

This thesis analyzes different sources of disparities in health and access to care among immigrants and ethnic minorities in the United States. The first chapter studies the generational worsening observed in the birth outcomes of Hispanics in the United States. Despite their lower socio-economic status, Hispanic immigrants in the United States initially have better health outcomes than natives. However, while their socio-economic status improves over time and across generations, their health deteriorates. This phenomenon is commonly known as the "Hispanic health paradox.'' There is an open debate about whether the observed convergence is explained by selection on health or by the adoption of less healthy lifestyles. This paper uses a unique dataset linking the birth records of two generations of Hispanics born in California and Florida (1975-2009), to analyze the mechanisms behind the generational decline in birth outcomes. The second chapter (joint with Emily R. Gee) investigates the role of ethnic networks and the effect of providing online information in foreign-language in facilitating Medicaid take-up among immigrants in the US. Many low-income immigrants are uninsured yet eligible for public health insurance. In this paper, we examine whether language barriers and network effects can explain disparities in insurance Medicaid participation. Using the 2008 and 2009 American Community Survey, we show that linguistic networks facilitate Medicaid enrolment among non-English speaking adults. The third chapter analyzes the effect of food-environment on maternal weight gain and pregnancy outcomes. This paper studies how changes in the quality of food environment affect maternal and child health. Similarly to Currie et al. (2009), I use mother fixed-effects and exploit over time variation in the proximity to different set of restaurants. Results show that proximity to Mexican restaurants is associated with a lower likelihood of excessive weight gain among US born mothers

The Economic Benefit of Data-Communication Technology on the New York Metroplex Area

The aim of this paper is to estimate the economic benefit for the New York Metroplex area of the controller-to-pilot communication standard known as Data-Communication. RAMS simulation software was first used to evaluate the potential impact of the new technology on airport operations in the three airports of LaGuardia, Newark and John F. Kennedy. The new technology would allow for a greater number of operations and reduce the average hourly workload for air traffic controllers. We employ a two steps procedure. First, we estimate a benefit function per number of hourly operations. Second, using the empirical distribution of hourly operations and the benefit function found in step one, we compute the average daily benefit from the technology as the reduced cost from delays plus the net effect on controllers workload due to its implementation. The procedure is applied at each airport individually and to the metroplex area as a whole. Our estimates show that the introduction of Data-Comm would yield significant savings in the New York Metroplex area

The effects of age and job protection on the welfare costs of inflation and unemployment

We extend the happiness literature on the welfare costs of inflation and unemployment by looking at age and job market characteristics. Our findings show that the relative welfare cost of unemployment versus inflation is higher than one, and much higher in intermediate age cohorts and in low job protection countries. The potential role of our findings in explaining the heterogeneous behaviour of CBs under different job market settings is discussed and compared with alternative explanations based on other institutional or structural differences in economies and in their reactions to shocks.Phillips curve Unemployment/inflation trade-off Happiness Employment protection Aging population