-------- Original Message --------
> THE LATEST WORKING PAPERS
> National Bureau of Economic Research, USA
> Week of June 14, 2004
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Welfare Reform and Health
> by Marianne Bitler, Jonah Gelbach, Hilary Hoynes #10549 (HE PE)
> http://papers.nber.org/papers/W10549
>
>
> The Costs of Low Birth Weight
> by Douglas Almond, Kenneth Y. Chay, David S. Lee #10552 (HE CH)
> http://papers.nber.org/papers/W10552
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Welfare Reform and Health
> by Marianne Bitler, Jonah Gelbach, Hilary Hoynes - #10549 (HE PE)
>
> Abstract:
>
> We investigate the relationship between welfare reform and health
> insurance, health care utilization, and self-reported measures of
> health status for women aged 20-45, using nationally representative
> data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. We present
> estimates from both difference-in-difference models (applied to
> single women and single women with children) and
> difference-in-difference-in-difference models (using married women
> and single women without children as comparison groups). We find that
> welfare reform is associated with reductions in health insurance
> coverage and specific measures of health care utilization, as well as
> an increase in the likelihood of needing care but finding it
> unaffordable. We find no statistically significant effects of reform
> on health status. Overall, effects are somewhat larger for Hispanics
> compared to blacks and low educated women.
>
> http://papers.nber.org/papers/W10549
>
> The Costs of Low Birth Weight
> by Douglas Almond, Kenneth Y. Chay, David S. Lee - #10552 (HE CH)
>
> Abstract:
>
> Birth weight has emerged as the leading indicator of infant health
> and welfare and the central focus of infant health policy. This is
> because low birth weight (LBW) infants experience severe health and
> developmental difficulties that can impose enormous costs on society.
> But would the prevention of LBW generate equally sizable cost savings
> and health improvements? Estimates of the return to LBW-prevention
> from cross-sectional associations may be biased by omitted variables
> that cannot be influenced by policy, such as genetic factors. To
> address this, we compare the hospital costs, health at birth, and
> infant mortality rates between heavier and lighter infants from all
> twin pairs born in the United States. We also examine the effect of
> maternal smoking during pregnancy the leading risk factor for LBW
> in the United States on health among singleton births after
> controlling for detailed background characteristics. Both analyses
> imply substantially smaller effects of LBW than previously thought,
> suggesting two possibilities: 1) existing estimates overstate the
> true costs and consequences of LBW by at least a factor of four and
> by as much as a factor of 20; or 2) different LBW-preventing
> interventions have different health and cost consequences, implying
> that policy efforts that presume a single return to reducing LBW will
> necessarily be suboptimal.
>
> http://papers.nber.org/papers/W10552
>
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