Search Results
Author: Cassidy, Michael
Resulting in 1 citation.
| 1. |
Cassidy, Michael |
|
Essays on Microeconomic Causal Inference in Welfare, Education, and Health Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, School of Graduate Studies, 2020 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Young Adult Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Breastfeeding; Cognitive Ability; Educational Attainment; Health/Health Status/SF-12 Scale; Income; Labor Force Participation; Modeling, Fixed Effects; Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Math); Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT- Reading); Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. In Chapter 3, I retain emphases on families and education and study the long-term effects of breastfeeding. Despite consensus among medical authorities about the desirability of breastfeeding, causal evidence about its effects is surprisingly scant. Using a thorough collection of empirical approaches and detailed longitudinal data spanning five decades, I investigate a comprehensive set of outcomes with greater breadth and continuity than previous work. On average (per OLS), breastfeeding is associated with modest and persistent cognitive advantages from childhood through young adulthood---even after controlling for an extensive set of confounding forces. Accounting for breastfeeding duration strengthens these relationships and uncovers favorable labor market and fertility linkages as well. But there is no evidence for enduring health benefits. At the same time, a novel extended family fixed effects analysis comparing differentially breastfed siblings and cousins finds little association between breastfeeding and any outcome. I argue these findings are not mutually exclusive by providing evidence that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the divergent estimates are the consequence of considerable negative selection into the subset of families contributing to fixed effects identification. |
|
|
Bibliography Citation
Cassidy, Michael. Essays on Microeconomic Causal Inference in Welfare, Education, and Health. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, School of Graduate Studies, 2020. |