20 research outputs found
Does early access to pension wealth improve health?
Ministry of Education, Singapore under its Academic Research Funding Tier
Economic impact of targeted government responses to COVID-19: Evidence from the large-scale cluster in Seoul
Spending impact of COVID-19 stimulus payments: Evidence from card transaction data in South Korea
Short-term impact of COVID-19 on consumption spending and its underlying mechanisms: Evidence from Singapore
Ministry of Education, Singapore under its Academic Research Funding Tier
The Great Recession and Workers' Health Benefits
During a recession, cost-sharing of employer-sponsored health benefits could increase to reduce labor costs in the U.S. Using a variation in the severity of recession shocks across industries, I find evidence that the enrollment rate of high deductible health plans (HDHPs) among workers covered by employer-sponsored health benefits increased more among firms in industries that experienced severe recession shocks. As potential mechanisms, I study employer-side and worker-side mechanisms. I find that employers changed health benefit offerings to force or incentivize workers to enroll in HDHPs. But I find little evidence of an increase in workers??? demand for HDHPs due to a reduction in income. These results suggest that the HDHP enrollment rate increased during the Great Recession, as employers tried to save costs of offering health benefits
Maternal breastfeeding and children's cognitive development
Do children with lower test scores benefit more from breastfeeding than those with higher scores? In this paper, I examine the distributional effects of maternal breastfeeding on the cognitive test scores of 11,544 children who were born in 2000 and 2001 in the United Kingdom using a semiparametric quantile regression model. I find evidence that maternal breastfeeding has larger positive impacts on children with lower test scores. Effects for children below the 20th percentile are about 2-2.5 times greater than those for children above the 80th percentile. I also find that these distributional effects are larger when the duration of breastfeeding is extended. One policy implication is that a public policy aims at promoting breastfeeding might narrow a disparity in children's cognition