Domestic Violence and the Mental Health and Well-being of Victims and Their Children

Almost one third of women worldwide report some form of physical or sexual violence by a partner in their lifetime, yet little is known about the mental health and well-being effects for either victims or their children. We study the costs associated with domestic violence (DV) in the context of Norway, where we can link offenders to victims and their children over time. Our difference-in-differences framework uses those who will be victimized in the future as controls. We find that a DV report involving the police is associated with large changes in the home environment, including marital dissolution and a corresponding decline in financial resources. A DV report increases mental health visits by 35% for victims and by 19% for their children in the year of the event, effects which taper off over time for the victim, but not for children. Victims also experience more doctor visits, lower employment, reduced earnings and a higher use of disability insurance while their children are more likely to receive child protective services and commit a crime. Using a complementary RD design, we find that a DV report results in declines both in children’s test scores and completion of the first year of high school

Family income and children's education: Using the Norwegian oil boom as a natural experiment

Parental income is positively correlated with children's educational attainment. This paper addresses the causality of this observed link. We have a unique data set for Norwegians born in the period 1967-1969, with a measure of permanent family income in the children's adolescence. This enables us to examine the long-term effect of family income on children's educational attainment. The Norwegian oil shock in the 1970s is used as an instrument, because this - in some regions but not in others - implied a general increase in income unrelated to parents' abilities. This variation in income is used to estimate the causal effect of family income on children's educational attainment. We find no such causal relationship. This result is robust with respect to different specification tests.Mobility Instrumental variables Income and education

Building Bridges and Widening Gaps: Efficiency Gains and Equity Concerns of Labor Market Expansions

We exploit the opening of a large bridge to study how access to a larger labor market affects economic efficiency, and how these potential efficiency gains are distributed across workers. The bridge we study connected the third largest city of Sweden to the capital of Denmark, and led to a substantial increase in the labor market opportunities of Swedes. Using unique cross-country matched registry data, we find that the bridge led to a large increase in cross-country commuting among Swedes, driven both by extensive and intensive employment responses. This commuting effect translates into a significant increase in the average wage of Swedes residing close to the bridge, providing strong evidence of an efficiency gain for individuals in Sweden. However, these efficiency gains are unevenly distributed across workers: the effect is largest for high-educated men and smallest for low-educated women. Thus, the efficiency gains come at the cost of rising income inequality and an increase in the gender wage gap, both within- and across-households. These equity effects are driven not only by differences in the propensity to commute, but also by occupational segregation

Long-Term Consequences of Access to Well-child Visits.

A growing literature documents the positive long-term effects of policy-induced improvements in early-life health and nutrition. However, there is still scarce evidence on early-life health programs targeting a large share of the population and the role of such programs in increasing intergenerational mobility. This paper uses the rollout of mother and child health care centers in Norway, which commenced in the 1930s, to study the long-term consequences of increasing access to well-child visits. These well-child visits included a physical examination and the provision of information about adequate infant nutrition. Our results indicate that access to mother and child health care centers had a positive effect on education and earnings: access in the first year of life increased the completed years of schooling by 0.15 years and earnings by two percent. The effects were stronger for children from a low socioeconomic background. In addition, we find that individuals suffer from fewer health risks at age 40 and positive effects on adult height, which support the fact that better nutrition within the first year of life is the likely mechanism behind our findings. While there is increasing knowledge on the benefits of various types of early childhood programs, the costs are often neglected, making it hard to compare different programs. We add to this by showing that investments in mother and child health care centers pass a simple cost-benefit analysis

Long-Term Consequences of Access to Well-child Visits.

A growing literature documents the positive long-term effects of policy-induced improvements in early-life health and nutrition. However, there is still scarce evidence on early-life health programs targeting a large share of the population and the role of such programs in increasing intergenerational mobility. This paper uses the rollout of mother and child health care centers in Norway, which commenced in the 1930s, to study the long-term consequences of increasing access to well-child visits. These well-child visits included a physical examination and the provision of information about adequate infant nutrition. Our results indicate that access to mother and child health care centers had a positive effect on education and earnings: access in the first year of life increased the completed years of schooling by 0.15 years and earnings by two percent. The effects were stronger for children from a low socioeconomic background. In addition, we find that individuals suffer from fewer health risks at age 40 and positive effects on adult height, which support the fact that better nutrition within the first year of life is the likely mechanism behind our findings. While there is increasing knowledge on the benefits of various types of early childhood programs, the costs are often neglected, making it hard to compare different programs. We add to this by showing that investments in mother and child health care centers pass a simple cost-benefit analysis

School Selectivity, Peers, and Mental Health

Although many students suffer from anxiety and depression, and students often identify school pressure and concerns about their futures as the main reasons for their worries, little is known about the consequences of a selective school environment on students’ physical and mental health. In this paper, we draw on rich administrative data and the features of the high school assignment system in the largest Norwegian cities to consider the long-term consequences of enrollment in a more selective high school. Using a regression discontinuity analysis, we show that eligibility to enroll in a more selective high school increases the probability of enrollment in higher education and decreases the probability of diagnosis or treatment by a general medical practitioner for psychological symptoms and diseases. We further document that enrolling in a more selective high school has a greater positive impact when there are larger changes in the student–teacher ratio, teachers’ age, and the proportion of female teachers. These findings suggest that changes in teacher characteristics are important for better understanding the effects of a more selective school environment

Incarceration Spillovers in Criminal and Family Networks

Using quasi-random assignment of criminal cases to judges, we estimate large incarceration spillovers in criminal and brother networks. When a defendant is sent to prison, there are 51 and 32 percentage point reductions in the probability his criminal network members and younger brothers will be charged with a crime, respectively, over the ensuing four years. Correlational evidence misleadingly finds small positive effects. These spillovers are of first order importance for policy, as the network reductions in future crimes committed are larger than the direct effect on the incarcerated defendant

Incarceration, Recidivism and Employment.

Understanding whether, and in what situations, time spent in prison is criminogenic or preventive has proven challenging due to data availability and correlated unobservables. This paper overcomes these challenges in the context of Norway’s criminal justice system, offering new insights into how incarceration affects subsequent crime and employment. We construct a panel dataset containing the criminal behavior and labor market outcomes of the entire population, and exploit the random assignment of criminal cases to judges who differ systematically in their stringency in sentencing defendants to prison. Using judge stringency as an instrumental variable, we find that imprisonment discourages further criminal behavior, and that the reduction extends beyond incapacitation. Incarceration decreases the probability an individual will reoffend within 5 years by 29 percentage points, and reduces the number of offenses over this same period by 11 criminal charges. In comparison, OLS shows positive associations between incarceration and subsequent criminal behavior. This sharp contrast suggests the high rates of recidivism among ex-convicts is due to selection, and not a consequence of the experience of being in prison. Exploring factors that may explain the preventive effect of incarceration, we find the decline in crime is driven by individuals who were not working prior to incarceration. Among these individuals, imprisonment increases participation in programs directed at improving employability and reducing recidivism, and ultimately, raises employment and earnings while discouraging further criminal behavior. For previously employed individuals, while there is no effect on recidivism, there is a lasting negative effect on employment. Contrary to the widely embraced ‘nothing works’ doctrine, these findings demonstrate that time spent in prison with a focus on rehabilitation can indeed be preventive for a large segment of the criminal population