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I use differences-in-differences models to uncover the causal effects of state mental illness parity laws on mental illness and educational outcomes. I leverage plausibly exogenous variation in insurance coverage for mental healthcare using changes in state laws over the period 1998 to 2008. First, to study parity law effects on mental illness I utilize administrative data on completed suicides from National Vital Statistics System and survey data on reported mental illness from Behavioral Risk Factor System. Second, I use longitudinal data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 Cohort to study the effects of the mental illness parity law on two important educational outcomes: drop out decisions and grade point average (GPA).

The second essay investigates the effects of family size on child health. This essay is a joint study with Kabir Dasgupta. In this study, we use matched mother-child data from the National Longitudinal Surveys to study the effects of family size on child health. Focusing on excess body weight indicators as children's health outcome of interest, we examine the effects of exogenous variations in family size generated by twin births and parental preference for mixed sex composition of their children. We find no significant empirical support in favor of the quantity-quality trade-off theory in instrumental variable regression analysis. This result is further substantiated when we make use of the panel aspects of the data to study child health outcomes of arrival of younger siblings at later parities.

The third essay estimates the causal effect of being born out of wedlock on a child's health outcome and early academic achievements. Specifically, the study uses rich panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the Children of the NLSY79 (NLSY79-child), coupled with a sibling fixed-effects model to address omitted variable bias attributable to unobserved family characteristics.