Twin births are often construed as a natural experiment in the social and natural sciences on the premise that their occurrence is quasi-random. We present new population-level evidence challenging this premise. Using data on about 18 million births in 72 countries, we find that maternal...

Although understanding the role of health in driving labor market outcomes is a matter of great importance, it has proven difficult to isolate this effect due to empirical challenges and a lack of compelling sources of identification. We obtain causal estimates of the effect of health on income...

This paper investigates the potential of an infant intervention to improve life expectancy, contributing to emerging interest in the early life origins of chronic disease. We analyse a pioneering program trialled in Sweden in the 1930s, which provided information, support and monitoring of...

We investigate restructuring of the health system in Brazil motivated to operationalize universal health coverage. Using administrative data from multiple sources and an event study approach that exploits the staggered rollout of programmatic changes across municipalities, we find large...

We identify earnings impacts of exposure to an infant health intervention in Sweden, using individual linked administrative data to trace potential mechanisms. Leveraging quasi-random variation in eligibility, we estimate that exposure was associated with higher test scores in primary school for...

We investigate the importance of subjective expectations of returns to and effort costs of the two main investments that mothers make in newborns: breastfeeding and stimulation. We find heterogeneity across mothers in expected effort costs and expected returns for outcomes in the cognitive,...

In this paper we examine the impact of a tailored health warning on health outcomes. We exploit the design of a household panel survey that provided feedback to participants on their blood-pressure levels as a quasi-experiment. We find that many participants who were told their blood-pressure...