Dércio de Assis - Research

Non-Fatal Strangulation Laws and Intimate Partner Homicides

with Arpita Ghosh, Sonia Oreffice, and Climent Quintana-Domeque

This paper has been presented at: the Exeter Internal Seminar Series, the CEPR Women in Economics Seminar Series, the Gender Issues and Development Workshop at Universite Paris Nanterre, the 34th Annual Meeting of the American Law and Economics Association, the Workshop on Labour and Family Economics (University of York), Universidad de Granada, the University of Aberdeen, the Nottingham Internal Seminar Series, the 1st Workshop on Violence Against Women: Drivers and Policies (IEB, Universitat de Barcelona), and the 4th Catalan Economic Winter Workshop.

Do non-fatal strangulation laws save lives? Non-fatal strangulation (NFS) is a common and dangerous form of intimate partner violence (IPV) and a predictor of homicide, yet it was historically neglected by the criminal justice system. Since the year 2000, most U.S. states have enacted laws enlisting NFS as a standalone criminal offense. We compile a novel dataset on state NFS statutes and link it to the FBI Supplementary Homicide Reports from 1990 to 2019 to estimate the causal effects of these laws on IPH rates. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, and an estimator that accounts for staggered adoption and treatment heterogeneity, we find that NFS laws led to significant reductions in IPH rates. We estimate that these laws reduce female-victim IPH by 14% and male-victim IPH by 36%, among victims aged 18-34. No significant effects are observed for victims 50 and above or for homicides committed by strangers. Event-study estimates support the parallel trends assumption. Our findings suggest that NFS laws can disrupt the escalation of IPV and reduce lethal outcomes.

IZA Discussion Paper available here.

Childhood Poverty and Life Expectancy: Evidence from Brazilian Human Development Units

Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Demographic Economics

This paper has been presented at: 2nd City/Royal Holloway University of London Workshop on Family and Health Economics, ifo Institute Conference on Understanding Socio-Economic Inequalities with Novel Data and Methods (Munich, Germany), 17th RGS Doctoral Conference in Economics (Essen, Germany), CAEN-UFC, University of Exeter, and Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Group (HCEO, University of Chicago) & Centre for Experimental Research on Fairness, Inequality and Rationality (FAIR, Norwegian School of Economics) summer school on socioeconomic inequality.

This paper analyzes data from urban Brazil using supervised machine-learning techniques to shed greater light on the role that childhood poverty plays in lifelong health and longevity. By examining a unique dataset collected over a 10-year period from thousands of very small, sub-neighborhood-level geographic areas, I document that child poverty measures have higher predictive power than household income, and other major socioeconomic variables, in forecasting child and adult health outcomes and lifespans. In addition, using a rich dictionary of hundreds of variables and different data-driven specification selections, the machine-learning models reveal that experiencing more severe deprivation in childhood is associated with a decrease of 4 percentage points in the probability of survival to ages 40 and 60. These predictions offer further economic insights on the importance of early life circumstances for human development.

NICEP Discussion Paper available here. Slides here.

Health Decentralization, Prenatal Care and Neonatal Mortality

with Victor H. de Oliveira

This paper examines the causal relationship between prenatal care and neonatal health. Using population-level administrative data from over 41 million births in Brazil from 2000 to 2013, we propose estimating the causal impact of Prenatal Visits (7+) coverage on neonatal mortality rates. To overcome common issues related to omitted variable bias, we employ a natural-experiment-based instrumental variable, leveraging the Brazilian Constitutional Amendment Act No. 29/2000 as a source of exogenous variation in public health funding. Our innovative research design uses state-level measures of Health Decentralization after the law's full implementation as a plausible instrumental variable. The main results demonstrate that two-stage least squares estimates of the effects of prenatal care coverage on neonatal health are significant, robust, and well-estimated. A 10% increase in Prenatal Visits (7+) coverage leads to a 7% decrease in early neonatal mortality rate. Even considering the possibility that our instrument may violate the exogeneity condition does not undermine the robustness of our findings. Finally, we propose to discuss potential mechanisms and policy implications.

The preliminary draft is available here. Slides here.

Implementation and Evaluation of a Parenting Program in Rural Northeast Brazil: The Case of PADIN

with Flávio Cunha, Rita Almeida, Leandro Costa, and Jimmy Oliveira

The paper describes the implementation and evaluation of a home visitation with community meetings program targeted to parents living in low-income rural areas in the state of Ceara, Brazil. To evaluate the program, the team used the 2010 Census data to identify target areas. We randomly selected about half of these areas to receive the program whose implementation started in June 2017. The remaining areas were assigned to the control condition. In February 2017, our team collected baseline data in both control and treatment locations and we find that both areas are comparable in dimensions of child development and parent-child interaction. The paper also shows the results of the evaluation of the program impacts after one year of the program.

Publications in Portuguese:

de Assis, Dércio (2020). Descentralização e Resultados na Saúde Infantil no Brasil, Estudos Econômicos, São Paulo, vol.50 n.3, p.447-484.
de Assis, Dércio; Linhares, Fabrício (2018). Dinâmica da Pobreza, Mudanças Macroeconômicas e Disparidades Regionais no Brasil, Pesquisa e Planejamento Econômico, Rio de Janeiro, v. 48, n. 2, p.57-96.
de Assis, Dércio; de Medeiros, Cleyber; Nogueira, Cláudio (2017). Extrema Pobreza Infantil, Crescimento e Distribuição de Renda, Planejamento e Políticas Públicas, Brasília-DF, v.48, n.1, p.175-205. (Prêmio de Excelência em Pesquisa Ipea Roberto Campos).
de Assis, Dércio; Linhares, Fabrício; Penna, Christiano (2016). Efeito da Desigualdade no Crescimento Econômico dos Municípios Brasileiros: Uma Análise com base no Jackknife Model Averaging, Revista de Economia, Curitiba, v. 43, n.2, p.1-18.