Is the intergenerational educational link due to nature or nurture? In order to answer this dilemma, this paper identifies the effect of parental education on their offspring?s schooling attainment using a discontinuity in the parental educational attainment. The discontinuity stems from changes...

Is the intergenerational educational link due to nature or nurture? In order to answer this dilemma, this paper identifies the effect of parental education on their offspring’s schooling attainment using a discontinuity in the parental educational attainment. The discontinuity stems from...

Does single motherhood adversely affect infant health? This question is not easy to answer because of the endogeneity of coresidence during pregnancy. In this paper, we exploit quasi-natural variation in single motherhood from the moment of conception to that of birth arising from marriageable...

This paper uses the implementation of a privately funded family planning program in Colorado to demonstrate that expanding access to long-acting reversible contraceptives to lower income women creates positive selection in the health of the children being born, reducing the rates of extremely...

This paper documents an important unintended consequence of expanding contraceptive access; namely that it creates positive selection in the health of the children being born. I use a family planning intervention which gave thousands of long-acting reversible contraceptives to reproductive-age...

Studies have estimated the relationship between psychological stress and birth weight by exploiting natural disasters and terrorist attacks, both of which could affect fetal health through other channels. Using data from the National Vital Statistics System for the period 1969-2004, we estimate...

Flint changed its public water source in 2014, causing severe water contamination. We estimate the effect of in utero exposure to polluted water on health at birth using the recent Flint water crisis as a natural experiment. Matching vital statistics birth records with various sources of data,...

This paper is one of the first to examine the associations between prenatal sunshine exposure and birth outcomes, specifically the incidence of low birth weight (LBW) and small for gestational age (SGA), based on a nationally representative birth record dataset in China. During the sample period...

This paper investigates the effects of prenatal exposure to extreme temperatures on birth outcomes – specifically, the log of birth weight and an indicator for low birth weight – using a nationally representative dataset in rural China. During the span of our data (i.e., 1991–2000), indoor...

This study investigates the impact of recent crises in Argentina (including the severe downturn of 2001-2002) on health and education outcomes. The identification strategy relies on both the inter-temporal and the cross-provincial co-variation between changes in regional GDP and outcomes by...