Intermarriage and the Unhealthy Assimilation of Immigrant Descendants

This paper studies the effects of assimilation on the health of Hispanics in the US. I exploit a unique dataset of linked birth records and use ethnic intermarriage as a metric of acculturation. Intermarried Hispanics have a significantly higher socio-economic status than endogamously married Hispanics. Despite their higher socio-economic status and the positive socio-economic gradient in health, third-generation children of second- generation intermarried Hispanic women are more likely to have poor health at birth, even after I account for second-generation health at birth, employ only within-family variations in the extent of assimilation, and consider the endogeneity of intermarriage. These results do not appear to be driven by father's selectivity nor by individual unobservable characteristics associated with intermarriage. The children of intermarried natives do not receive the same "health penalty", nor do Hispanics intermarried to other ethnic groups. The intermarriage "health penalty" largely reflects the higher incidence of risky behaviors (e.g., smoking during pregnancy) among intermarried Hispanic women

Do immigrants squeeze natives out of bad schedules? Evidence from Italy

This paper documents the effect of immigrant concentration on natives' work schedules. I show that immigrants are more likely to work at non-standard hours (i.e. evenings, nights and Sundays) and that a higher proportion of immigrants in the local labor market is associated with a lower probability of employed natives working non-standard shifts. Results are strongest in sectors and occupations that are more accessible to immigrants. In particular, I find that a 1 standard deviation increase in the foreign population residing in a province is associated to a 4% reduction in the natives' likelihood of working non standard hours

Why Does the Health of Immigrants Deteriorate? Evidence from Birth Records

Despite their lower socioeconomic status, Hispanic immigrants in the United States initially have better health outcomes than natives. Paradoxically while second-generation immigrants assimilate socio-economically, their health deteriorates. I show that a model of selection and intergenerational transmission of health reverses the apparent paradox, predicting a worse deterioration than the one observed in the data. While higher incidence of risk factors and acculturation are associated with poorer health, the reverse paradox is explained by the relative persistence in healthy behaviors among Hispanics. These effects hold true even in a subset of siblings, and holding constant grandmother-fixed effects

Do immigrants improve the health of native workers?

Public debate on immigration focuses on its effects on wages and employment, yet the discussion typically fails to consider the effects of immigration on working conditions that affect workers' health. There is growing evidence that immigrants are more likely than natives to work in risky jobs, as they are more inclined to take on physically intensive tasks. Recent studies show that as immigration rises, native workers are pushed into less demanding jobs. Such market adjustments have positive impacts on the health of the native workers

Do Immigrants Bring Good Health?

This paper studies the effects of immigration on health. We merge information on individual characteristics from the German Socio-Economic Panel with detailed local labor market characteristics for the period 1984 to 2009. We exploit the longitudinal component of the data to analyze how immigration affects the health of both immigrants and natives over time. Immigrants are shown to be healthier than natives upon their arrival (healthy immigrant effect), but their health deteriorates over time spent in Germany. We show that the convergence in health is heterogeneous across immigrants and faster among those working in more physically demanding jobs. Immigrants are significantly more likely to work in strenuous occupations. In light of these facts, we investigate whether changes in the spatial concentration of immigrants affect natives' health. Our results suggest that immigration reduces residents' likelihood to report negative health outcomes by improving their working conditions and reducing the average workload. We show that these effects are concentrated in blue-collar occupations and are larger among low educated natives and previous cohorts of immigrants

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

If You Don't Snooze You Lose: Evidence on Health and Weight

Most economic models consider sleeping as a pre-determined and homogeneous constraint on individuals' time allocation neglecting its potential effects on health and human capital. Several medical studies provide evidence of important associations between sleep deprivation and health outcomes suggesting a large impact on health care systems and individual productivity. Yet, there is little causal analysis of the effects of sleep duration. This paper uses a spatial regression discontinuity design to identify the effects of sleep on health status, weight, and cognitive abilities. Our results suggest that delaying morning work schedules and school start times may have non-negligible effects on health

If you don’t snooze you lose health and gain weight: evidence from a regression discontinuity design

Sleep deprivation is increasingly recognized as a public health challenge. While several studies provided evidence of important associations between sleep deprivation and health outcomes, it is less clear whether sleep deprivation is a cause or a marker of poor health. This paper studies the causal effects of sleep on health status and obesity exploiting the relationship between sunset light and circadian rhythms and using time-zone boundaries as an exogenous source of variation in sleep duration and quality. Using data from the American Time Use Survey, we show that individuals living in counties on the eastern side of a time zone boundary go to bed later and sleep less than individuals on the opposite side of the time zone boundary. These findings are driven by individuals whose biological schedules and time use are constrained by social schedules (i.e., work schedules, school starting times). Exploiting these discontinuities, we find evidence that sleep deprivation increases the likelihood of reporting poor health status and the incidence of obesity. Our results suggest that the increase in obesity is explained by both changes in eating behavior and a decrease in physical activity

Nuns and the Effects of Catholic Schools: Evidence from Vatican II

This paper examines the causal effects of Catholic schooling on educational attainment. Using a novel instrumental-variable approach that exploits an exogenous shock to the Catholic school system, we show that the positive correlation between Catholic schooling and student outcomes is explained by selection bias. Spearheaded by the universal call to holiness and the opening to lay leadership, the reforms that occurred at the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) in the early 1960s produced a dramatic exogenous change in the cost/benefit ratio of religious life in the Catholic Church. The decline in vocations that followed contributed to a significant increase in costs and, in many cases, to the closure of Catholic schools. We document that this decline was heterogeneous across US dioceses, and that it was more marked in those dioceses governed by a liberal bishop. Merging diocesan data drawn from the Official Catholic Directory (1960-1980) and the US Census, we show that that the variation in the supply of female religious teachers across US dioceses is strongly related to Catholic schooling. Using the abrupt decline in female vocations as an instrument for Catholic schooling, we find no evidence of positive effects on student outcomes