Deaton and Lubotsky (2003) found that the robust positive relationship across American cities between mortality and income inequality became small, insignificant, and/or non-robust once they controlled for the fraction of each city’s population that is black. Ash and Robinson (Ash, M., &...

Deaton and Lubotsky (2003) found that the robust positive relationship across American cities between mortality and income inequality became small, insignificant, and/or non-robust once they controlled for the fraction of each city’s population that is black. Ash and Robinson (Ash, M., &...

We assess the impact of fully paid maternity leave on maternal health in the year after birth. We exploit a sudden expansion of paid leave from 6 to 12 weeks in the United States Army and Air Force to estimate impacts under regression discontinuity and difference in differences frameworks....

Although the United States provides unpaid maternity and family leave to qualifying workers, it is the only OECD country without a national paid leave policy, making wage replacement a pivotal issue under debate. We use ten years of linked administrative data from California together with a...

From 1977-2001, 15 US states mandated health insurance providers to offer coverage for infertility treatment. Although the majority of the past literature has studied impacts on older women who are likely to seek treatment, this paper proposes that the mandates may have had a wider impact on the...

We revisit the cyclical nature of birth rates and infant health and investigate to what extent the relationship between aggregate labor market conditions and birth outcomes is mitigated by the consumption smoothing income assistance delivered through unemployment insurance (UI). We introduce a...

Over the last few decades, health care services in the United States have become more centralized. We study how the loss of hospital-based obstetric units in over 400 rural counties affect maternal and infant health via a difference-in-differences design. We find that closures lead to...

The Affordable Care Act eliminated cost-sharing for contraception for Americans with health insurance, but substantial cost sharing remains for uninsured individuals who seek care through Title X--a national family planning program that provides patient-centered, subsidized contraception and...

Over the last few decades, health care services in the United States have become more geographically centralized. We study how the loss of hospital-based obstetric units in over 400 counties affect maternal and infant health via a difference-in-differences design. We find that closures lead...

This is a rejoinder to a comment written by Cutler and Miller on our recent paper, "Public Health Efforts and the Decline in Urban Mortality" (IZA DP No. 11773), which reanalyzes data used by Cutler and Miller to investigate the determinants of the urban mortality decline from 1900 to 1936. Two...