In recent years many studies have reported significant empirical associations between fertility and marital dissolution. Whether this is a causal effect or only a correlation is not clear. We explore this issue by using the propensity score methods. First we explore the effect of the binary treatment ”having young children or not” on marital disruption. Then, we extend the method to the case of...

Objectives. The transition to adulthood can be challenging, especially for children of incarcerated parents. Drawing on reentry and life-course scholarship, we argue that parental incarceration may adversely affect multiple life outcomes for children as they progress from adolescence into adulthood and that such effects may persist from early young adulthood into late young adulthood. Methods. ...

This paper assesses nonexperimental estimators using results from a six-state random assignment study of mandatory welfare-to-work programs. The assessment addresses two questions: which nonexperimental methods provide the most accurate estimates; and do the best methods work well enough to replace random assignment? Three tentative conclusions emerge. Nonexperimental bias was larger in the med...

Propensity score matching and weighting are popular methods when estimating causal effects in observational studies. Beyond the assumption of unconfoundedness, however, these methods also require the model for propensity score to be correctly specified. The recently proposed covariate balancing propensity score (CBPS) methodology weakens this assumption by directly optimizing sample covariate b...

Our analysis of migration differs from previous research in three important aspects. First, we exploit the confidential geocoding in the NLSY79 to obtain a distance-based measure. Second, we let the effect of migration on wage growth differ by schooling level. Third, we use propensity score matching to address selection issues. An economic model helps us determine the variables included in the ...

This paper focuses on the effects of commuting time on sickness insurance utilization by applying a generalized propensity score estimator to a large sample of Swedish employees. We analyse the effect of commuting time both on the probability of using sickness insurance at all and on the probability that an individual on sick leave is on so-called partial sick leave rather than being completely...

The propensity score is the probability of treatment assignment conditional on observed baseline characteristics. The propensity score allows one to design and analyze an observational (nonrandomized) study so that it mimics some of the particular characteristics of a randomized controlled trial. In particular, the propensity score is a balancing score: conditional on the propensity score, the ...

In this article, we have demostrated the application of two newly proposed estimators which accounts for lack of overlap under propensity score matching on a case study involing the analysis of health expenditure data for the United States. Citation: Baser, Onur, (2007) "Propensity Score Matching with Limited Overlap." Economics Bulletin, Vol. 9, No. 8 pp. 1-8 Submitted: March 17, 2007. Accepte...

Background: It is often the case in research that groups of interest represent a small number of records or have other distinct characteristics. For example, the group may consist of those with extreme values (either high or low), such as Opioid problem users (Subramaniam, Ives, Stitzer, & Dennis, 2010), or have other unique characteristics such as those who are deaf or hard of hearing (Titus, ...

This paper examines the foundations for comparing individuals and treatment subjects in experimental and other program evaluation contexts. We raise the question of multiattribute "characterization" of individuals both theoretically and statistically. The paper examines the information basis of characterizing individuals and offers alternatives motivated by welfare and decision theories. The pr...