This paper examines the health effects of Caesarean section (CS) for children and their mothers. We use exogenous variation in the probability of CS in a fuzzy regression discontinuity design. Using administrative Danish data, we exploit an information shock for obstetricians that sharply...

This paper investigates the leave-out strategy of instruments by using the leave-out community ratio of household access to in-yard water sources and community water infrastructure as instruments for hours in fetching water time, and the data on disease symptoms. The results show that...

Globally, suicide has emerged as the second leading cause of death among youth aged 10–24 years old. In order to better understand the causes of this phenomenon, we investigate the relationship between suicidal ideation and cannabis use. Our empirical analysis is based on a 30-year...

Understanding what drives households to seek medical services is challenging because the factors affecting the perceived benefits and costs of professional health care can be the same. In this paper, we disentangle the channels through which different factors affect the use of medical services,...

The high and rapidly increasing prevalence of mental illnesses underscores the importance of understanding their causal origins. This paper analyzes one factor at a critical stage of human development: exposure to maternal stress from family ruptures during the fetal period. We find that in...

We use administrative data on Swedish lottery players to estimate the causal impact of wealth on players' own health and their children's health and developmental outcomes. Our estimation sample is large, virtually free of attrition, and allows us to control for the factors such as the number of...

Studies on health effects of unemployment usually neglect spillover effects on spouses. This study specifically investigates the effect of an individual's unemployment on the mental health of their spouse. In order to allow for causal interpretation of the estimates, it focuses on plant closure...

This paper uses data from the 1970 British Cohort Study to quantify the intergenerational persistence of mental health, and the long-run economic costs associated with poor parental mental health. We find a strong and significant intergenerational correlation that is robust to different...

Do sudden, large wealth losses affect mental health? We use exogenous variation in the interview dates of the 2008 Health and Retirement Study to assess the impact of large wealth losses on mental health among older U.S. adults. We compare cross-wave changes in wealth and mental health for...

Studies on health effects of unemployment usually neglect spillover effects on spouses. This study specifically investigates the effect of an individual's unemployment on the mental health of their spouse. In order to allow for causal interpretation of the estimates, it focuses on plant closure...