Social media and depression

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How did the rollout of Facebook affect the mental health of college students?

Social Media and Mental Health

By Luca Braghieri, Ro'ee Levy, and Alexey Makarin

American Economic Review, November 2022

We provide quasi-experimental estimates of the impact of social media on mental health by leveraging a unique natural experiment: the staggered introduction of Facebook across US colleges. Our analysis couples data on student mental health around the year...

Multigenerational Impacts of Childhood Access to the Safety Net: Early Life Exposure to Medicaid and the Next Generation's Health

By Chloe N. East, Sarah Miller, Marianne Page, and Laura R. Wherry

American Economic Review, January 2023

We examine multigenerational impacts of positive in utero health interventions using a new research design that exploits sharp increases in prenatal Medicaid eligibility that occurred in some states. Our analyses are based on US Vital Statistics natality ...

The Impact of Income-Driven Repayment on Student Borrower Outcomes

By Daniel Herbst

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2023

In the United States, most student loans follow a fixed payment schedule that falls early in borrowers' careers. This structure provides no insurance against earnings risk and may increase student loan defaults. Income-driven repayment (IDR) plans are des...

Temperature, Worker Productivity, and Adaptation: Evidence from Survey Data Production

By Melissa LoPalo

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2023

This paper estimates the impact of daily weather on worker productivity by using household survey data to study interviewers. Using data from over 9,000 Demographic and Health Surveys interviewers in 46 countries, I find that interviewers complete 13.6 pe...

Incentivized Peer Referrals for Tuberculosis Screening: Evidence from India

By Jessica Goldberg, Mario Macis, and Pradeep Chintagunta

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2023

We study whether and how peer referrals increase screening, testing, and identification of patients with tuberculosis, an infectious disease responsible for over one million deaths annually. In an experiment with 3,176 patients at 122 tuberculosis treatme...

The Economic Impact of Access to Reproductive Health Services

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Hilton Riverside, Commerce Chair: Martha Bailey (University of California-Los Angeles) Authors: Joanna Lahey (Texas A&M University) (presenting), Marianne Wanamaker (University of Tennessee), Kelly Jones (American University) (presenting), Mayra Pineda-Torres (Georgia Institute of Technology), Martha Bailey (University of California-Los Angeles) (presenting), Vanessa Lang (University of Michigan), Iris Vrioni (University of Michigan), Lea Bart (University of Michigan), Alexa Prettyman (University of California-Los Angeles), Daniel Eisenberg (University of California-Los Angeles), Paula Fomby (University of Michigan), Jennifer Barber (Indiana University), Vanessa Dalton (University of Michigan), Susan Athey (Stanford University) (presenting), Katy Bergstrom (Tulane University), Vitor Hadad (Stanford University), Julian C. Jamison (University of Exeter), Berk Özler (World Bank), Luca Parisotto (World Bank), Julius Dohbit Sama (University of Yaoundé I)

Mental health therapy in the developing world

[Research Highlight]

January 19, 2023

Nathan Barker discusses the impact of cognitive behavioral therapy in rural Ghana.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy among Ghana's Rural Poor Is Effective Regardless of Baseline Mental Distress

By Nathan Barker, Gharad Bryan, Dean Karlan, Angela Ofori-Atta, and Christopher Udry

American Economic Review: Insights, December 2022

We study the impact of group-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for individuals selected from the general population of poor households in rural Ghana (N = 7,227). Results from one to three months after the program show strong impacts on mental and ...

Health Effects of Increasing Income for the Elderly: Evidence from a Chilean Pension Program

By Enrico Miglino, Nicolás Navarrete H., Gonzalo Navarrete H., and Pablo Navarrete H.

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2023

We estimate the effect of a permanent income increase on the health outcomes of the elderly poor. Our regression discontinuity design exploits an eligibility cutoff in a Chilean basic pension program that grants monthly payments to retirees without a cont...

Expanding Access to Clean Water for the Rural Poor: Experimental Evidence from Malawi

By Pascaline Dupas, Basimenye Nhlema, Zachary Wagner, Aaron Wolf, and Emily Wroe

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2023

Data from an 18-month randomized trial show large and sustained impacts on water purification and child health of a program providing monthly coupons for free water treatment solution to households with young children. The program is more effective and mu...

What Does a Provider Network Do? Evidence from Random Assignment in Medicaid Managed Care

By Jacob Wallace

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2023

Leveraging the random assignment of over 50,000 Medicaid enrollees in New York, I present causal evidence that narrower networks are a blunt instrument for reducing health care spending. While narrower networks constrain spending, they do so by generating...

Unraveling the Hispanic Health Paradox

[Symposium: Hispanic Americans]

By José Fernandez, Mónica García-Pérez, and Sandra Orozco-Aleman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 2023

In 2019, Hispanics in the US had a life expectancy advantage of 3.0 years and 7.1 years over non-Hispanic Whites and non-Hispanic Blacks, respectively, despite having real-household income values 26 percentage points lower than Non-Hispanic White househ...

Graduate Student Mental Health: Lessons from American Economics Departments

By Valentin Bolotnyy, Matthew Basilico, and Paul Barreira

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2022

We study the mental health of graduate students at eight top-ranked economics PhD programs in the United States using clinically validated surveys. We find that 24.8 percent experience moderate or severe symptoms of depression or anxiety—more than two...

Intergenerational Persistence in Child Mortality

By Frances Lu and Tom Vogl

American Economic Review: Insights, March 2023

We study the intergenerational persistence of inequality by estimating grandmother-mother associations in the loss of a child, using pooled data from 119 Demographic and Health Surveys in 44 developing countries. Compared with compatriots of the same age,...

When a Doctor Falls from the Sky: The Impact of Easing Doctor Supply Constraints on Mortality

By Edward N. Okeke

American Economic Review, March 2023

This paper describes the results of a policy experiment conducted in coordination with the Nigerian government. In this experiment, some communities were randomly selected to receive a new doctor. These doctors were posted to the local public health cente...

The Public Health Effects of Legalizing Marijuana

By D. Mark Anderson and Daniel I. Rees

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2023

Thirty-six states have legalized medical marijuana and 18 states have legalized the use of marijuana for recreational purposes. In this paper, we review the literature on the public health consequences of legalizing marijuana, focusing on studies that h...

Designing Information Provision Experiments

By Ingar Haaland, Christopher Roth, and Johannes Wohlfart

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2023

Information provision experiments allow researchers to test economic theories and answer policy-relevant questions by varying the information set available to respondents. We survey the emerging literature using information provision experiments in econom...

The economic fallout from environmental crises

[Research Highlight]

March 02, 2023

The effect of the Flint water crisis on housing prices.