Parental Job Loss and Infant Health

Although there exists a large literature documenting various consequences of job loss, this paper is the first to explore the extent to which the health effects of job displacement extend to the children of displaced workers and also the first to consider whether there are any harmful effects for children who are not yet born when the separation occurs. I use detailed work and fertility histories from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to estimate the effect of parents' job displacements on children's birth weights. These data allow for an identification strategy that essentially compares the outcomes of children born after a displacement to the outcomes of their siblings born before using mother fixed effects. I find that husbands’ job losses have significant negative effects on infant health. They reduce birth weights by approximately four and a half percent with suggestive evidence that the effect is concentrated on the lower half of the birth weight distribution.children, infant health, job loss, displacement

Drawn into Violence: Evidence on 'What Makes a Criminal' from the Vietnam Draft Lotteries

Draft lottery number assignment during the Vietnam era provides a natural experiment to examine the effects of military service on crime. Using exact dates of birth for inmates in state and federal prisons in 1979, 1986, and 1991, we find robust evidence of effects on violent crimes among whites. In particular, we find that draft eligibility increases incarceration rates for violent crimes by 14 to 19 percent. Based on Angrist and Chen's (2008) estimate of the effect of draft eligibility on veteran status, these estimates imply that military service increases the probability of incarceration for a violent crime by 0.27 percentage points. Results for nonwhites are not robust. We conduct two falsification tests, one that applies each of the three binding lotteries to unaffected cohorts and another that considers the effects of lotteries that were not used to draft servicemen.crime, violence, military, two-sample IV, Vietnam War

Drawn into Violence: Evidence on 'What Makes a Criminal' from the Vietnam Draft Lotteries

Draft lottery number assignment during the Vietnam Era provides a natural experiment to examine the effects of military service on crime. Using exact dates of birth for inmates in state and federal prisons in 1979, 1986, and 1991, we find that draft eligibility increases incarceration for violent crimes but decreases incarceration for non-violent crimes among whites. This is particularly evident in 1979, where two-sample instrumental variable estimates indicate that military service increases the probability of incarceration for a violent crime by 0.34 percentage points and decreases the probability of incarceration for a nonviolent crime by 0.30 percentage points. We conduct two falsification tests, one that applies each of the three binding lotteries to unaffected cohorts and another that considers the effects of lotteries that were not used to draft servicemen.

Alcohol and Student Performance: Estimating the Effect of Legal Access

We consider the effect of legal access to alcohol on student achievement. We first estimate the effect using an RD design but argue that this approach is not well suited to the research question in our setting. Our preferred approach instead exploits the longitudinal nature of the data, identifying the effect by measuring the extent to which a student’s performance changes after he gains legal access to alcohol, controlling flexibly for the expected evolution of grades as students make progress towards their degrees. We find that students’ grades fall below their expected levels upon being able to drink legally, but by less than previously documented. We also show that there are effects on women and that the effects are persistent.

Alcohol and Student Performance: Estimating the Effect of Legal Access

We consider the effect of legal access to alcohol, which is known to increase drinking behavior, on academic performance. We first estimate the effect using an RD design but argue that this approach is not well-suited to the research question in our setting. Our preferred approach instead exploits the longitudinal nature of the data, essentially identifying the effect by comparing a student's academic performance before and after turning 21. We find that students' grades fall below their expected levels upon being able to drink legally, but by less than previously documented. We also show that there are effects on women and that the effects are persistent. The main results are robust to the inclusion of individual fixed effects, individual trends, and individual quadratics, in addition to other controls, that account for the expected evolution of performance as students make progress towards their degrees.alcohol, post-secondary education, minimum legal drinking age

Running and Jumping Variables in RD Designs: Evidence Based on Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Birth Weights

Throughout the years spanned by the U.S. Vital Statistics Linked Birth and Infant Death Data (1983-2002), birth weights are measured most precisely for children of white and highly educated mothers. As a result, less healthy children, who are more likely to be of low socioeconomic status, are disproportionately represented at multiples of round numbers. This has crucial implications for any study using a regression discontinuity design in which birth weights are used as the running variable. For example, estimates will be biased in a manner that leads one to conclude that it is “good” to be strictly to the left of any 100-gram cutoff. As such, prior estimates of the effects of very low birth weight classification (Almond, Doyle, Kowalski, and Williams 2010) have been overstated and appear to be zero. This analysis highlights a more general problem that can afflict regression discontinuity designs. In cases where attributes related to the outcomes of interest predict heaping in the running variable, estimated effects are likely to be biased. We discuss approaches to diagnosing and correcting for this type of problem.regression discontinuity, donut RD, birth weight, infant mortality

Ability, gender, and performance standards: Evidence from academic probation

We use a regression discontinuity design to examine students\u27 responses to being placed on academic probation. Consistent with a model of introducing performance standards, we find that being placed on probation at the end of the first year discourages some students from returning to school while improving the GPAs of those who do. We find heterogeneous responses across prior academic performance, gender, and native language, and discuss these results within the context of the model. We also find negative effects on graduation rates, particularly for students with the highest high school grades

Evidence on the Efficacy of School-Based Incentives for Healthy Living

We analyze the effects of a school-based incentive program on children's exercise habits. The program offers children an opportunity to win prizes if they walk or bike to school during prize periods. We use daily child-level data and individual fixed effects models to measure the impact of the prizes by comparing behavior during prize periods with behavior during non-prize periods. Variation in the timing of prize periods across different schools allows us to estimate models with calendardate fixed effects to control for day-specific attributes, such as weather and proximity to holidays. On average, we find that being in a prize period increases riding behavior by sixteen percent, a large impact given that the prize value is just six cents per participating student. We also find that winning a prize lottery has a positive impact on ridership over subsequent weeks; consider heterogeneity across prize type, gender, age, and calendar month; and explore differential effects on the intensive versus extensive margins.health; exercise; children; school; incentives; active commuting

Ability, Gender, and Performance Standards: Evidence from Academic Probation

We use a regression discontinuity design to examine students' responses to the negative incentive brought on by being placed on academic probation. Consistent with a model of introducing performance standards in which agents respond differently based on ability, we find that being placed on probation at the end of the first year discourages some students from returning to school while improving the performance of those who return. Contrary to the predictions of the model when ability is known, we find that heterogeneous discouragement effects result in high ability students having a greater overall dropout rate near the cutoff than lower ability students. The result can be explained by extending the model to allow for the performance standard to also affect self confidence (ability expectations). We also consider effects by gender and find that being placed on probation more than doubles the probability that men drop out but has no such discouragement effect for women.