With Barton Willage and Alexander Willèn, Journal of Health Economics, 2025, 103 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2025.103047  

This paper examines the intergenerational consequences of parental participation in government social insurance programs, using one of the largest social insurance programs in the world: sick leave. We exploit quasi-random assignment of patients to general practitioners (GPs) in Norway, who vary in their propensity to certify sick leave of different lengths, to estimate the effects of access to longer sick leave for the marginal individual. Linking administrative data on patients and their children, we show that assignment to a more lenient GP lowers children’s GPA in adolescence, reduces the likelihood of completing upper secondary education, and decreases enrollment in higher education. These effects appear to operate through changes in parental trajectories: more sick leave leads to lower long-term earnings, greater reliance on welfare, and deterioration in mental health. 

Link with free full-text access until September 24, 2025: https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1lYeWc7LGG8Dx 

With Rita Ginja, Barton Willage and Alexander Willèn, Accepted in Journal of Political Economy Microecomics, July 2024  https://doi.org/10.1086/732838 

We estimate doctor value-added across an entire country by combining rich population-wide patient-doctor register data with random assignment of patients to GPs. We show that there is substantial variation in the quality of GPs as measured by patients’ post-assignment mortality. While we find evidence of certain doctor characteristics and practice styles predicting a GP’s VA, we also show that most of the variation in GP quality is driven by differences in the GPs’ unobserved ability. In terms of mechanisms, we show that patients assigned to high-quality GPs do not receive a different quantity of treatment, and that the VA variation across GPs is primarily reflecting differences in the GPs’ ability to engage in early prevention and assign the right procedure to the patient. Finally, we show that patients are unable to identify who the high-quality doctors are, and that patient-generated GP ratings are uncorrelated with GP value-added. Using a lower bound of the predicted value of an additional life year in Norway, our results suggest that replacing the worst performing 5 percent of GPs with GPs of average quality generates a social benefit of $934 million. At the same time, we find that higher-quality GPs are associated with a lower per-patient cost.

Link to earlier WP:  click here

With Barton Willage and Alexander Willèn. REStat. Review of Economics and Statistics, 2022, 104(4), p621-635 https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_00975 

We use exogenously-assigned general practitioners to study the effects of female role models on educational outcomes of girls. Girls who are exposed to female GPs are more likely to sort into male-dominated education programs in high school, most notably STEMM. These effects persist as females enter college and select majors. The effects are larger for high-ability girls with low educated mothers, suggesting that female role models improve intergenerational mobility and narrow the gifted gap. This demonstrates that role model effects in education need not involve individuals in the classroom, but can arise due to everyday interactions with medical professionals.

With Signe A. Abrahamsen and Rita Ginja, submitted 

In this project we estimate the impacts of increased availability of health care professionals at schools on educational achievement, teenage childbearing, welfare dependency, and health in early adulthood. Our empirical strategy uses two dimensions of variation: we combine a 1999-reform that led to a differential expansion in the ratio of school nurses to pupils across Norwegian municipalities, with differences in exposure to the reform across cohorts within each municipality. The reform increased the likelihood of high school graduation, college attendance, stronger labor market attachment, and reduced teenage child birth. There is also an increase in the use of primary and outpatient hospital services at ages 25-35, which may reflect raised awareness of own health and lowered barriers to consult health professionals. These findings suggest that preventive health care at schools, provided at a relatively low cost, have positive and lasting impacts.

Link to Working Paper: click here

With Linda Östergren, ongoing - updating with new data and revising draft

In this paper the focus is on how child care for toddlers (age 1-2 ) affects schooling and health outcomes in adolescence and young adulthood.  Overall, we find positive effects of increased access to preschool at early ages on school performance and health outcomes. More specifically, we find an increase in the children’s reading and writing, and mathematical grades, and a reduction in the probability of acute hospital visits and visits related to psychological, metabolic and eye/ear problems. The increase in school performance is mainly driven by males, while the reduction in the probability of visits due to psychological problems is driven by females and children from families with high socio-economic status.

With Emilia del Bono and Anne-Lise Breivik, ongoing - updating with new data and revising draft.

This paper examines the impact of increased access to universal childcare on adult health measured in midlife (age 45-55). 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 behavior and parental investment in children, respectively. We also observe a modest reduction in the use of mental healthcare services and services related to injuries and social problems, pointing toward improved mental health. Children most likely to be affected by the reform, namely the children of employed mothers, seem to be driving  many of  the effects.