Research

• The Impact of Standardized Disease-Specific Healthcare Coverage

with Pablo Muñoz
Journal of Public Economics, 2025

We study the impact of a healthcare reform that standardized procedures and guaranteed the timely coverage of a set of diseases. Using Chile’s universe of death records and a difference-in-differences research design, we show that mortality from the diseases covered by this reform decreased by 4.4% and that the impact was larger on diseases more amenable to health care. This effect is not explained by disease-specific shocks or a resource shift from non-covered to covered diseases. Evidence from polytraumatized inpatients suggests that the reform equalized utilization rates as it reduced the dispersion of risk-adjusted surgery rates and spending across hospitals.

• Do Conditional Cash Transfers Reduce Hypertension?

with Emma Aguila, William H. Dow, Felipe Menares, Susan W. Parker, Jorge Peniche, and Soomin Ryu

Economics and Human Biology, 2024

• Adverse Effects of Non-Contributory Pensions on Older Adult Mortality in Mexico 

with William H. Dow, Emma Aguila, Susan W. Parker, Jorge Peniche, and Soomin Ryu 

We study an unconditional cash transfer to alleviate rural poverty among older adults aged 70 and over. Using death records and a triple difference-in-differences research design, we find the surprising result that deaths among age-eligible populations in localities covered by the program increased by 5.4%. We show that cardiovascular disease deaths drive this result, with increases higher among older men than women. We explore mechanisms using the income and expenditure survey and a difference-in-discontinuities design. We find little evidence of significant changes in single mechanisms, albeit with limited statistical power, except for a drop in employment and wage earnings.

• The “Staircase” Pattern of Schooling on Longevity: New Evidence for the Absence of a Causal Link

with Ryan D. Edwards and Josh R. Goldstein

draft upon request

We study the relationship between education, income, and longevity in U.S. mortality among males over 65 born in the early 20th century. While each additional year of schooling increases income, improvements in longevity are observed only at key educational milestones—8, 12, and 16 years—creating a “staircase” pattern. This pattern remains consistent across models and does not appear to be influenced by occupational differences. The lack of a straightforward dose-response relationship suggests that longevity benefits may reflect selective factors related to who completes each educational level rather than a direct effect of time spent in school.

• Long-Term Effects of Social Insurance on Adult Mortality: Evidence From the Progresa Program in Mexico

with Emma Aguila, William H. Dow, Susan W. Parker, Jorge Peniche, and Soomin Ryu 

Research on the mortality effects of income-support social insurance programs for older adults has generated conflicting results, but this work has primarily focused on short-run effects. We analyze the older adult mortality effects of Mexico’s pathbreaking Progresa conditional cash transfer social insurance program. We employ difference-in-differences models that exploit the geographic variation in program expansion to estimate lagged effects from one to ten years after increased coverage, focusing on high-poverty municipalities. We find that Progresa substantially reduced mortality in the short-run, particularly among females, with the largest effects after three years. All-cause mortality effects attenuated at increasing lag lengths, with no sustained benefit in ten-year lag models. Results varied by cause of death, though, with long-term benefits of earlier cash transfers sustained for female diabetes mortality even after a ten-year lag.

• The Long-Term Health Impact of World War II on Draftees' Wives 

This research aims to provide causal evidence on the impact of income shock due to the absence of breadwinners on women's long-term health. We plan to use cohorts of women married before WWII to compare the outcomes of those who got married to men who served in the conflict against those who did not. We will use the CenSoc WWII Army Enlistment Dataset, a cleaned and harmonized version of the National Archives and Records Administration’s Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, ca. 1938 – 1946 (2002). It contains enlistment records for over 9 million men and women who served in the United States Army, including the Army Air Corps, Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, and Enlisted Reserve Corps. It is a rich source of data on enlistee sociodemographic information, military service, and anthropometry.