By age two a child who is up to date for immunizations will have received up to 19 shots delivered over eight visits at a market cost of $525 dollars for the vaccines alone, a far more expensive and demanding regimen that the 8 shots received in 1987. In recognition of the potential importance...

In this article, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of the effect of parental involvement (PI) laws on the incidence of abortions to minors across a span of nearly three decades. We contribute to the extant literature on this topic in several ways. First, we explore differences in estimates of...

We compare student academic performance in traditional twice-a-week and compressed once-a-week lecture formats in introductory microeconomics between one semester in which students were randomly assigned into the formats and another semester when students were allowed to choose their format. In...

We examine the relationship between social media activity, such as Google searches and tweets, related to teen pregnancy and the airing of the MTV program 16 and Pregnant. In contrast to Kearney and Levine's (2015) claim of a positive relationship, we find that the association is statistically...

We test whether students in a hybrid format of introductory microeconomics, which met once per week, performed as well as students in a traditional lecture format of the same class, which met twice per week. We randomized 725 students at a large, urban public university into the two formats, and...

In an effort to improve breastfeeding, the Oregon WIC Program tested whether a relatively low-cost telephone peer counseling initiative to support breastfeeding could increase the initiation and duration of exclusive breastfeeding among its participants. They conducted a large randomized field...

I examine whether New York State's Prenatal Care Assistance Program (PCAP) is associated with greater use of prenatal services and improved birth outcomes. PCAP is New York State's augmented prenatal care initiative that became a part of the Medicaid program after expansion in income eligibility...

We use a pooled time-series cross-section of live births in New York City between 1980 and 1989 to investigate the dramatic rise in low birthweight, especially among Blacks, that occurred in the mid 1980s. After controlling for other risk factors, we estimate that the number of excess low...

This paper examines the impact of induced abortion on birth outcomes by treating abortion as an endogenous input into the production of infant health. To gauge the direct and indirect effect of abortion, three measures of infant health are considered simultaneously: the neonatal sortality rate,...

This paper determines newborn costs and lengths of stay attributable to prenatal exposure to cocaine and other illicit drugs, using as a data source all parturients who delivered at a large municipal hospital in New York City between November 18, 1991 and April 11, 1992. We performed a...