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Author: Ucar, Ferit
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Ucar, Ferit |
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Three Essays in Health and Labor Economics Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 2008 Cohort(s): NLSY79 Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses (PQDT) Keyword(s): Child Health; Health/Health Status/SF-12 Scale; Labor Economics; Medicaid/Medicare; National Health Interview Survey (NHIS); Variables, Instrumental Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. This dissertation consists of three self-contained empirical essays on topics in health and labor economics. The first chapter analyzes the effects of Medicaid on children's health care utilization and health outcomes by looking at the effect of the remarkable expansions of Medicaid eligibility for low-income children that took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These Medicaid expansions provide a natural experiment in which insurance coverage varies in a way that is plausibly considered exogenous. Using the National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS), instrumental variables (2SLS) models suggest that Medicaid coverage significantly increases the utilization of medical care by low-income children. Specifically, Medicaid is found to substantially decrease the probability of going without a visit to a doctor's office and significantly increase probability of hospitalization in the previous year. Increased Medicaid coverage is also associated with a significantly higher probability of going to a doctor's office than going to ER or hospital clinics. However, the estimation results provide no support for the hypothesis that Medicaid improves the health of low-income children. The second chapter is the first attempt to study the long-term effects of Medicaid on children's health outcomes by looking at the effects of the same Medicaid expansions that took place in the later 1980s and early 1990s. These expansions significantly increased the percentage of pregnant women and children eligible for Medicaid but did so at very differential rates across the states. The substantial variation in Medicaid eligibility thresholds by state, and year, and the age of the child provide the identifying variation for the analysis. By using restricted access data, containing state of birth and state of residence of children, I match children to the Medicaid eligibility rules in their year of birth and currently. The results suggest that the expansions were effective in improving the health of children from low-income families in the long run. Increased Medicaid eligibility at birth is associated with better health outcomes in the future. But interestingly eligibility at older ages (conditional on eligibility at birth) is not. The third chapter examines the effects of using friends, relatives and acquaintances in job search on current and future wages and job tenure of individuals using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) data. Individuals who use contacts may differ from those that don't. For example, both females and African-Americans are less likely to use contacts in job search in the US. This paper uses switching regression models to deal simultaneously with an endogenous selection issue in contact's choice and the existence of two different regimes of wage and job tenure determination. Econometric estimates provide evidence for the existence of a selection effect on the choice of informal contacts and, after correcting the selection bias, using contacts has a positive effect on both wages and job tenure. The paper also explores whether some types of contacts result in greater wages and longer tenures. Gains from using informal contacts are largest for those that use male contacts of an older generation, rather than female or younger contacts. |
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Bibliography Citation
Ucar, Ferit. Three Essays in Health and Labor Economics. Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 2008. |