Health Shocks in the Family

Sharing The Burden of Death: Implicit Family Insurance, Mortality Shocks and Fertility and Child Health∗

This paper studies the network effects of kinship-based informal insurance on fertility and child health. Using demographic data from Malawi and exploiting differences between the patrilineal and matrilineal kinship in the composition of family network groups, this paper finds that the death of an adult in an insurance network significantly reduces fertility. While we find no evidence of intrah...

Ethics in family planning/reproductive health services

Health, Shocks and Poverty Persistence

In this paper we review the evidence on the impact of large shocks, such as drought, on child and adult health, with particular emphasis on Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. Our focus is on the impact of shocks on long-term outcomes, and we ask whether there are intrahousehold differences in these effects. The evidence suggests substantial fluctuations in body weight and growth retardation in response to ...

Health shocks and risk aversion.

We empirically assess whether a health shock influences individual risk aversion. We use grip strength data to obtain an objective health shock indicator. In order to account for the non-random nature of our data regression-adjusted matching is employed. Risk preferences are traditionally assumed to be constant. However, we find that a health shock increases individual risk aversion. The findin...

Health Shocks and Policy Evaluation∗

The medical sector is a large and growing part of the US economy, and expenditures on medical care are funded in large part by the government. As a result, understanding the effects of the policies which finance medical expenditures is of critical importance. In order to understand the effects of these policies, such as Medicare and the recently passed health care act, it is critical to underst...