Work in progress

The Career Costs of Children's Health Shocks, with Ana Costa-Ramón

We provide novel evidence on the impact of a child’s health shock on parental labor market outcomes. To identify the causal effect, we leverage long panels of high-quality Finnish and Norwegian administrative data and exploit variation in the timing of the health shock. We do this by comparing parents across families in similar parental and child age cohorts whose children experienced a health shock at different ages. We show that these families have very similar characteristics and were following parallel trends before the shock. This allows us to use a simple difference-in-differences model: we construct counterfactuals for treated households with families who experience the same shock a few years later. We find a sharp break in parents’ earnings trajectories that becomes visible just after the shock. The effect is stronger for mothers than for fathers and is driven by health shocks that need persistent care after the event. We also document a strong impact on parents’ mental well-being.

Effects of Universal Childcare on Long-Run Health, with Emilia Del Bono and Julie Riise

This paper examines the impact of increased access to universal childcare on adult health measured around midlife (age 30–47). We identify no adverse long-run effects on physical health, but affected women increase their use of pregnancy-related healthcare services and sickness absence. These are not driven by a change in fertility and do not seem to translate into improved birth outcomes for the second generation. We discuss two potential mechanisms: increased preventive health behaviour and parental investment in children, respectively. We also observe a modest reduction in the use of mental healthcare services and services related to social problems, pointing toward improved mental health. Children most likely to be affected by the reform, namely the children of employed mothers, are driving the effects.

Effects of Air Pollution on Health and Productivity, with Tor Helge Homås and Julie Riise
This paper examines the relationship between short-term air pollution increases and indicators of health and worker productivity. We examine three main outcomes: general practitioner (GP) consultations, certified sickness absences from work, and hospital visits. For all of these incidents we study the related diagnoses. Estimating two-way fixed effects models using geographical and time variation in exposure to particulate matter (PM10) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), we find that the number of GP consultations, certified sickness absence, and hospital visits increase in periods with high(er) pollution levels. There is substantial heterogeneity in this relationship. We find some support for previous results showing that pollution affects vulnerable groups like children and elderly negatively. Importantly however, the largest effects are on school age children and the working age population. This paper thus contributes to the literature by showing that also these, assumable less vulnerable groups are negatively affected, even at an arguably low level of pollution. This in turn causes a loss in productivity across the economy through increased sickness absence from work.