Causal Analysis of Child Care Policies: A Review of Recent Empirical Evidence
(with Hanchen Jiang and Xi Yang)
Forthcoming in Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics
Trade Shocks and Children's Health: Gendered Evidence from the China Shock (JMP)
This paper examines the impact of trade-induced declines in U.S. manufacturing employment on infant health at birth. While prior research has documented the adverse effects of this decline in labor demand on low-skilled workers, its impact on the next generation remains understudied. Using restricted-access birth certificate data and variation in manufacturing employment driven by the China shock, I find no overall effect on infant health, despite the substantial negative impact of the shock on manufacturing employment. However, a gender-specific analysis reveals important differences: import shocks to male manufacturing employment are associated with a significant decline in birth weight, while import shocks to female manufacturing employment is linked to improvements in birth weight. There is no evidence that changes in fertility or migration patterns drive these results. Instead, evidence suggests that reductions in family income resulting from reduced male manufacturing employment may contribute to worse infant health outcomes, while women's exits from the labor force or transitions to non-manufacturing sectors may be associated with positive effects on infant health.
Housing Prices, Fertility, and Childcare Costs" (with Xi Yang)
This paper estimate the causal effect of local housing price growth on childcare costs and fertility in the United States using an instrumental variable strategy that exploits plausibly exogenous variation in housing supply conditions from the land-unavailability instrument. Theory predicts an ambiguous effect: housing appreciation raises providers’ operating costs (supply-side channel) but also reduces fertility and contracts the local pool of childcare-demanding households (demand-side channel). Using a county-year panel of U.S. counties over 2011–2019, we find that a one-percent increase in local housing prices reduces center-based childcare price growth by 0.12–0.25 percent and reduces the local birth rate by roughly 0.35 births per 1,000 women ages 15–50. We find no corresponding response in childcare employment, wages, or establishment counts, ruling out a dominant supply-side channel. The results imply that falling childcare prices in high-cost housing markets reflect demographic contraction rather than improvements in affordability, with direct implications for how policymakers interpret price movements and for the joint design of housing and childcare policy amid persistent fertility decline.
Effects of the Introduction of Food Stamp Programs on International Mobility
Effects of the Electronic Benefit Trasnfer (EBT) System on Infant Health Outcomes at Birth
(with Marianne Bitler, Seojung Oh, and Leah Shiferaw)
Health Effects of Stringent Work Requirement for SNAP