RESEARCH
RESEARCH
Unintended pregnancies, more prevalent among disadvantaged households, set newborns on a lifetime course of disparities. Yet, policies addressing socioeconomic inequalities often overlook the long-term consequences of the decision to have a child. In this study, using geolocated birth data and leveraging the staggered adoption of a nationwide contraceptive policy carried out in Uruguay, we estimate the effect of better contraceptive accessibility on the health outcomes of newborns. By estimating differences in differences and event study specifications, we find an average 14% reduction in the number of births in the five years post-policy, which reaches a 30% decline towards the end of the analyzed period. This collapse in the number of births is guided by younger, less educated women, as well as those with more than two children. We also find a significant decrease in unplanned pregnancies of 23% on average and a noteworthy 4%-6% increase in measures of parental investment during the gestation period. Finally, we find evidence of improvements in neonatal health outcomes.
Don't Stop Believing: Empowering Low SES Students through Cognitive Behavioral Interventions [DRAFT]
Unrealized potential among low-income students is a significant loss for both individuals and society. Psychological constraints, such as low aspirations and underconfidence, limit students' ability to pursue opportunities. This paper evaluates a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) intervention designed to help students overcome these barriers. Implemented in Uruguay’s CECAP program and evaluated through a randomized controlled trial, I find that the intervention improved math scores by 6 percentage points and increased school enrollment by 12 percentage points. Treated students also showed greater resilience, stronger beliefs in effort-driven success, and higher expectations of achieving their educational goals. These findings highlight CBT’s potential to foster behavioral change and inform policies when there is a concrete belief attached to the therapy.
Building on the theoretical implications of a trade model and using a research design that relies on the revealed ranking of counties by profit-maximizing firms on where to locate in the US, this paper proposes an explanation for the heterogeneous effects of employment shocks on crime. While the empirical literature puzzles about a positive effect related to a better opportunity for predation and a negative one associated with a lower opportunity cost, we document that these opposite effects are connected to the input structure of the shock. When the shock derives from capital-intensive industries, we find an increase in property crimes, while shocks affecting labor-intensive industries exhibit a negative effect on drug dealing.
Impact of Social Media Algorithms on Mental Health Outcomes - with Aarushi Kalra
Rivers of Concern: Pollution and Pregnancy Outcomes - with Joaquín Paseyro
Fertility and Intimate Partner Violence - with with Joaquín Paseyro
This study examines the impact on human mobility of social distancing policies implemented in 18 Latin American and Caribbean countries in March 2020. We use cell phone data and variation across countries regarding the adoption of these policies and their timing to estimate effects on the percentage of people traveling more than 1 kilometer per day. Results indicate that lockdowns reduced mobility by 10 percentage points during the 15 days following its implementation. This accounts for a third of the decline in mobility between the first week in March and the first week in April in countries that implemented lockdowns. The effect during the second week of implementation is 28% lower compared to the effect documented during the first week. Additionally, we find that school closures reduced mobility by 4 percentage points, but no effects were found for bars and restaurants closures and the cancellation of public events.
This article analyzes the effects of police raids for different types of crime in the most conflictive neighborhoods of Montevideo, Uruguay. Interrupted time-series and intervention models are estimated using different specifications of geographical area where the crackdowns occurred and also different control strategies to produce robust results. The effect of crackdowns on crime reporting is mixed; evidence suggesting crackdowns may produce short- and long-term effects on crime depending on their ability to affect gangs’ competition for the territory and the market. It appears that the effects of raids are sensitive to the context of the criminal situation. Crackdowns are not consistently effective in influencing crime. Evidence shows it is hard to reach levels of critical enforcement through 1-day crackdowns and that crackdowns’ ability to alter drug-market conditions would depend not only on the ability to extract drug dealers from the territory but also in preventing a rapid return