Search Results

Title: Essays in Health Economics
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Fang, Muriel Z.
Essays in Health Economics
Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, The Ohio State University, 2012
Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79
Publisher: Department of Economics, The Ohio State University
Keyword(s): Body Mass Index (BMI); Child Health; Child Self-Administered Supplement (CSAS); Home Observation for Measurement of Environment (HOME); National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth); Parental Investments; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Racial Differences; Siblings

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

My dissertation consists of three essays that use different types of variation across the life cycle to study health outcomes and behaviors in children and young adults. The first essay examines how child health is shaped by parental investments using data from Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (CNLSY79). Substantial empirical evidence suggests that early parental investments have long term consequences for physical health. The developmental plasticity theory suggests that children are most sensitive to inputs received during their early years. I estimate a value-added child health production function with time varying rates of return to investment in order to investigate whether the rates of return are highest during early stages of a child's life. I address measurement error using a multiple-indicator multiple-cause (MIMIC) model with a linear structural relationship in which concurrent measurements act as instrumental variables. The results indicate that the rate of return to investment is higher during the prenatal and infancy periods than during subsequent periods of childhood. I also explore racial differences in the production function and find that rates of return to investment are lower for black children than for whites. This finding, coupled with the fact that black children are more likely to be born premature and with low birthweight, contributes to an understanding of how racial disparity in health at birth persists through childhood.
Bibliography Citation
Fang, Muriel Z. Essays in Health Economics. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Economics, The Ohio State University, 2012.