Research

Circadian preferences and work shift: Testing occupational sorting and implications

This work examines, for the first time, whether innate circadian preferences, known as chronotype, drive self-selection into alternative work shifts and occupations; and it evaluates how the alignment of biological and social clocks impacts early labour market outcomes. Leveraging a representative sample of US early adults from Add Health and a polygenic index (PGI) for morningness to characterise chronotype, I find no evidence of chronotype-based sorting. Then, I assess the implications of the lack of matching between workers’ circadian and work timings. I find a positive relationship of morningness with job satisfaction, while not with earnings. This relationship plausibly stems from higher likelihood of early chronotypes to find roles aligned with their innate circadian rhythms, which improves the synchrony between biological and social clocks and ultimately enhances overall job satisfaction.

The long-term effects of whooping cough: Evidence from vaccine introduction in the UK

with Stephanie von Hinke and Nicolai Vitt

Whooping cough is a highly contagious infection of the respiratory system, and one of the most prevalent vaccine-preventable childhood diseases worldwide. Despite its frequent perception as a mild illness, it is a major driver of hospital admissions in early life, when the immune system is more vulnerable. While the short-run benefits of vaccination are well established, its long-term consequences are largely unknown. This paper fills this gap. Exploiting the staggered roll-out of whooping cough vaccinations across England and Wales over two decades in a difference-in-differences design, we estimate the causal impact of vaccine availability at birth on adult health and human capital. Using historical local disease data, we show that vaccination led to a significant reduction of monthly notification rates of ∼19% relative to the pre-roll-out mean. Leveraging individual-level data from the UK Biobank, we find that vaccine exposure at birth lowers the risk of chronic and severe respiratory conditions in adulthood, reduces related hospitalisations and mortality, and increases fluid intelligence. The effects are largest in densely populated and socio-economically disadvantaged areas, where contagion risk was higher. Our findings provide the first causal evidence that pertussis immunisation yields substantial long-term benefits and can play a central role in reducing long-term socioeconomic inequalities.