Unfinished lives: The effect of domestic violence on neonatal and infant mortality

India accounts for 1.7 million child deaths, a quarter of global child mortality. The current literature has succeeded in establishing an association between domestic violence and child mortality, but has yet to present evidence of a causal relationship. In this paper we use an instrumental variable approach to analyse the causal impact of domestic violence against the mother on child mortality in the Indian context. Domestic violence is instrument ed with the real price o f gold at the time of marriage of the mother. Results lend evidence to a bias in OLS estimates and s how a significant positive relationship between domestic violence and mortality. A one standard deviation increase in domestic violence translates to a 6 percentage point increase in both neonatal and infant mortality

Public health issues in India and UK: Child Mortality and Survival Expectations

This thesis consists of three self-contained research articles that empirically explore survival expectations of older populations and mortality amongst children. Chapter 1 examines methodological considerations in eliciting survival probabilities in India and tests their associations with known socioeconomic characteristics. Chapter 2 investigates the effect of a survey induced negative health information shock on survival expectations of older Britons. Chapter 3 estimates the causal effect of domestic violence on child mortality in India. The analysis uses the pilot study of the Longitudinal Ageing Study of India (LASI) in Chapter 1, the English Longitudinal Ageing Study (ELSA) in Chapter 2 and the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) in Chapter 3. The general timeframe of the analysis is 1991 to 2010. The findings in Chapter 1 suggests that it is feasible to elicit subjective survival expectations in a developing country context and that these expectations correlate in meaningful ways with previously known social and economic predictors. Chapter 2 finds that individuals update subjective survival expectations in response to new information in meaningful ways and in Chapter 3 I find evidence that suggest a causal and significantly positive relationship between domestic violence and child mortality

Eliciting Survival Expectations of the Elderly in Low-Income Countries: Evidence From India

We examine several methodological considerations when eliciting probabilistic expectations in a developing country context using the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI). We conclude that although, on average, individuals are able to understand the concept of probability, responses are sensitive to framing effects and to own versus hypothetical-person effects. We find that overall, people are pessimistic about their survival probabilities compared with state-specific life tables and that socioeconomic status does influence beliefs about own survival expectations as found in previous literature in other countries. Higher levels of education and income have a positive association with survival expectations, and these associations persist even when conditioning on self-reported health. The results remain robust to several alternative specifications. We then compare the survival measures with objective measures of health. We find that activities of daily life, height, and low hemoglobin levels covary with subjective expectations in expected directions

The effect of computer use on job quality : evidence from Europe

This paper studies changes in computer use and job quality in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015. We document that while the proportion of workers using computers has increased from 40% to more than 60% over twenty years, there remain significant differences between countries even within the same occupations. Several countries have seen a significant increase in computer use even in low-skilled occupations generally assumed to be less affected by technology. Overall, the great increase in computer use between 1995 and 2015 has coincided with a period of modest deterioration of job quality in the EU-15 as whole, as discretion declined for most occupational and educational groups while intensity increased slightly for most of them. Our OLS results that exploit variation within country-occupation cells point to a sizeable positive effect of computer use on discretion, but to small or no effect on intensity at work. Our instrumental variable estimates point to an even more benign effect of computer use on job quality. Hence, the results suggest that the (moderate) deterioration in the quality of work observed in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015 has occurred despite the spread of computers, rather than because of them

The unseen toll: excess mortality during covid-19 lockdowns

Abstract In March 2020, in an attempt to slow the spread of Covid-19, several countries intervened by imposing strict lockdown measures that limited contact among people. In contrast, Sweden decided to not implement a mandatory lockdown and instead allowed people free choice on whether or not to follow the government recommendation to limit contact with others. Using the Synthetic Control Method, we estimate the causal effect of not implementing a mandatory lockdown in Sweden in the period from the end of February 2020 to the end of September 2020, a time when vaccines were as yet not available. We find that not imposing a mandatory lockdown resulted in a lower reduction of mobility and a substantial increase in mortality. Our results indicates that up to about 4411 of the 46554 deaths registered in Sweden during this period could have been avoided had Sweden implemented a mandatory lockdown. These results remain consistent when using two additional state-of-the-art estimation methods; the augmented synthetic control method and synthetic difference-in-difference

N-Heterocyclic carbene (NHC) catalyzed annulation of enals and vinyl ketones: a novel synthesis of [2H]-pyranones

Homoenolate annulation of vinyl ketones led to the synthesis of dihydropyranones in contrast to cyclopentenes obtained by the homoenolate annulation of chalcones, another class of α,β-unsaturated ketones