Developmental disabilities are not rare among U.S. children and rates have been increasing in recent decades. The increases have been driven by cognitive and behavioral disorders. While some studies have investigated the effects of specific childhood conditions, particularly ADHD, on adult...

We study the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on chronic disease drug adherence. Focusing on asthma, we use a database that tracks the vast majority of prescription drug claims in the U.S. from 2018 to 2020. Using a difference-in-differences empirical specification, we compare monthly drug...

We estimate the effects of permanent legal status on the health of children born to immigrants in the United States using variation from the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). Our empirical approach compares trends in birth outcomes for foreign-born Mexican mothers across...

We investigate the effects of radiation therapy on the mortality and economic outcomes of breast cancer patients. We implement a 2SLS strategy within a difference-in-difference framework exploiting variation in treatment stemming from a medical guideline change in Denmark. Using administrative...

The opioid crisis generates broader societal harms beyond direct health and economic effects, impacting non-users through adverse spillovers on children, families, and communities. We study the spillover effects of a supply-side policy aimed at reducing the over-prescribing of opioids on women's...

A subset of harm reduction strategies encourages individuals to switch from a harmful addictive good to a less harmful addictive good; examples include e-cigarettes (substitutes for combustible cigarettes) and methadone and buprenorphine (substitutes for opioids). Such harm reduction methods have...

Firearm violence is a pervasive public health crisis in the United States, with significant numbers of homicides involving firearms, including indiscriminate shootings in public spaces. This paper investigates the largely unexplored consequences of stress induced by these attacks on newborn...

Whether monetary incentives to change behavior work and how they should be structured are fundamental economic questions. We overcome typical data limitations in a large-scale field experiment on vaccination (N = 5,324) with a unique combination of administrative and survey data. We find that...

The COVID-19 pandemic saw an unprecedented expansion of federal emergency rental assistance (ERA). Using applications to ERA lotteries in four cities linked to survey and administrative data, we assess its impacts on housing stability, financial security, and mental health. We find that...

Although improving psychological well-being was not the explicit focus of the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), psychological health outcomes may have been affected by the positive income shocks generated by the credit. In this chapter we ask: How did the 2021 expanded CTC affect parents'...