This study seeks to provide new evidence on the health and education effects of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Unlike most previous studies that focus on the effects of eligibility for a single year, we examine how cumulative enrollment in CHIP over a period of several years...

We investigate the short-term impact of out-of-home care on child health, schooling and juvenile crime. Using an event study to examine the dynamics around the time of placement, we document a clear deterioration of mental health and increasing crime rates before placement. After placement, we...

Managing dual practice of health workers has often proved to be challenging, especially in emerging countries characterized by weak monitoring and low motivation. This paper exploits an exogenous variation in the initiation of private practice among heads of local public facilities (known as...

Maternal and newborn health in rural America suffers from a lack of obstetrical care, which is currently at crisis levels. Many state-level public policies have exacerbated or even initiated barriers to quality and access in rural healthcare. Such policies include certificate-of-need (CON) laws,...

We explore the effects of decentralization on education and health in Ethiopia using an original database covering all of the country’s regions and woredas (local governments). Ethiopia is a remarkable case in which war, famine and chaos in the 1970s-80s were followed by federalization,...

We provide new evidence on the effect of education on later life health. Using variation in state compulsory schooling laws, we examine education's effect on a range of outcomes encompassing physical health, decision-making, and life expectancy. We employ under-utilized Health and Retirement...

The paper examines the causal effect of education on common individual mental disorders in adulthood. We use a representative population health survey and instrumental variable methods. The estimates point to mostly insignificant effects of education on common mental disorders. We find that the...

During World War II, more than one-half million tons of bombs were dropped in aerial raids on German cities, destroying about one-third of the total housing stock nationwide. This paper provides causal evidence on long-term consequences of large-scale physical destruction on the educational...

In this paper, we examine how orphanhood affects children’s educational and health outcomes in eleven sub-Saharan African countries. Our analysis is based on a comparison of orphans and non-orphaned children living under the same conditions. We also examine the impacts of various family...

Several studies have shown that body height is positively associated with educational attainment. In this paper, we investigate the mechanisms behind this relationship using data on German pre-teen students. We show that (i) taller children are more likely to enroll in 'Gymnasium', the most...