This thesis includes a collection of three distinct essays that study empirically the determinants of health and human capital and build a foundation for policy interventions.
Chapter 2 investigates the relationship between giving birth through unplanned caesarean section and mothers' mental health after childbirth. Previous studies have mostly explored the impact of this procedure on hospital expenditure and newborns, ignoring its effect on the new mothers' health. This chapter extends the literature by showing that having an unplanned caesarean section increases the risk of postnatal depression. The effect is even larger when accounting for the endogeneity of delivery method.
Chapter 3 uses a sample including all patients who received a coronary bypass during the period 2000-2010 within the English National Health Service to shed light on the effect of long waiting times for elective surgeries on patients' health. Waiting times have been extensively used as a non-price rationing mechanism in countries with universal health care systems. However, it is unclear whether rationing by waiting harms individuals' health. We find no evidence of waiting times increasing the risk of in-hospital mortality and an adverse but weak effect on 28-day emergency readmission following discharge.
With Chapter 4, the focus is shifted from healthcare systems to families, looking at the determinants of parental investments in children. We explore how parents' time investment, namely the amount of time they spend in formative activities with their children, responds to variations in their offspring's health, cognitive and socio-emotional abilities. Results indicate that mothers react differently to changes in different dimensions of the child's human capital; more specifically, they compensate for reductions in children's socio-emotional abilities. We also observe heterogeneous behaviours, which depend on mothers' level of education and working status
