Effects of Prenatal and Early Life Malnutrition: Evidence from the Greek Famine

This paper examines the long run education and labor market effects from early-life exposure to the Greek 1941-42 famine. Given the short duration of the famine, we can separately identify the famine effects for cohorts exposed in utero, during infancy and at one year of age. We find that adverse outcomes due to the famine are largest for infants. Further, in our regression analysis we exploit the fact that the famine was more severe in urban than in rural areas. Consistent with our prediction, we find that urban-born cohorts show larger negative impacts on educational outcomes than the rural-born cohorts.famine, health, regression discontinuity, Greece

The Effect of Abortion Liberalization on Sexual Behavior: International Evidence

Most industrialized countries have increased access to abortion over the past 30 years. Economic theory predicts that abortion laws affect sexual behavior since they change the marginal cost of having risky sex. We use gonorrhea incidence as a metric of risky sexual behavior. Using a panel of 41 North American, European and Central Asian countries over the period 1980-2000, we estimate the impact of abortion law reform on risky sex. Compared to the most restrictive legislation that permits abortion only to save the pregnant woman’s life or her physical health, more liberal abortion laws are associated with at least thirty additional gonorrhea cases per 100,000 individuals. The marginal effect of laws which make abortion available on request is larger than the effect of laws which allow abortion on socioeconomic and mental health grounds. Our results are robust against a set of alternative sample constructions and model specifications.Gonorrhea, pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion laws.

Obamacare – Hoffnung auf eine Reform des amerikanischen Gesundheitssystems?

Der Umbau des US-amerikanischen Gesundheitssystems ist eines der Vorhaben der gegenwärtigen US-Regierung. Der folgende Beitrag stellt die Organisation und die Leistungsfähigkeit des derzeitigen Gesundheitswesens vor und diskutiert die aktuellen Reformvorschläge.Gesundheitswesen, Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung, Gesundheitsreform, Vereinigte Staaten

Three Empirical Essays on the Long-Run Consequences of Early-Life Living Conditions

This study was prepared by Sven Neelsen while he was working with the ifo Institute for Economic Research. It was completed in December 2011 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich in May 2012. The study investigates long-run effects of early-life living conditions using micro-datasets from three countries. The employed empirical strategies aim to identify causal relationships between early-life living conditions and the outcomes of interest

Economic Impact of Illness with Health Insurance but without Income Insurance

__Abstract__ We examine economic vulnerability to illness when, as for informal sector workers in Thailand, there is universal coverage for health care but earnings losses are uninsured. Even with comprehensive health care entitlement, severe illness that strikes an initially healthy worker is found to raise out-of-pocket medical expenses by around two thirds and increase the probability that medical spending absorbs more than a tenth of the household budget by nine percentage points. Moreover, severe illness reduces the probability of remaining in employment by 18 points and precipitates a reduction in household labor income of almost one third. Despite the rise in medical expenses and fall in earnings, households are able to maintain expenditure on goods and services other than medical care by drawing on remittances and informal transfers, cutting back on saving, and by borrowing. In the short term, informal insurance fills gaps left uncovered by formal insurance but there is likely to be subst antial exposure to economic risks associated with long-term illness

Universal Coverage on a Budget: Impacts on Health Care Utilization and Out-Of-Pocket Expenditures in Thailand

We estimate the impact on health care utilization and out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures of a major reform in Thailand that extended health insurance to one-quarter of the population to achieve universal coverage while keeping health spending below 4% of GDP. Identification is through comparison of changes in outcomes of groups to whom coverage was extended with those of public sector employees and their dependents whose coverage was not affected. The reform is estimated to have reduced the probability that a sick person goes without formal treatment by 3.2 percentage points (11%). It increased the probability of receiving public ambulatory care by 2.7 ppt (5%) and of admission to a public hospital by 1 ppt (18%). OOP expenditures were reduced by one-third on average, as was the probability of spending more than 10% of the household budget on health care, while spending at the very top of the OOP distribution was reduced by one-half representing substantial reductio ns in exposure to medical expenditure risk. Supply-side measures implemented with the coverage extension are likely to have helped realize these effects from an increased, but still very tight, budget

The Long-Term Consequences of the Global 1918 Influenza Pandemic: A Systematic Analysis of 117 IPUMS International Census Data Sets

Several country-level studies, including a prominent one for the United States, have identified long-term effects of in-utero exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic (also known as the Spanish Flu) on economic outcomes in adulthood. In-utero conditions are theoretically linked to adult health and socioeconomic status through the fetal origins or Barker hypothesis. Historical exposure to the Spanish Flu provides a natural experiment to test this hypothesis. Although the Spanish Flu was a global phenomenon, with around 500 million people infected worldwide, there exists no comprehensive global study on its long-term economic effects. We attempt to close this gap by systematically analyzing 117 Census data sets provided by IPUMS International. We do not find consistent global long-term effects of influenza exposure on education, employment and disability outcomes. A series of robustness checks does not alter this conclusion. Our findings indicate that the existing evidence on long-term economic effects of the Spanish Flu is likely a consequence of publication bias