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In these essays, I study the effects of prenatal or early life access to public programs on subsequent health outcomes, employing quasi-experimental research settings derived from several exogenous changes in public policies: (1) the Unborn Child Option of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), (2) the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (CHIPRA) of 2009, and (3) the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. In the first chapter, I examine the causal effects of in utero public health insurance on child health beyond birth outcomes. The implementation of the Unborn Child Option (UCO) as part of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) provides a unique opportunity to isolate the causal effects of in utero public health insurance on child health beyond birth outcomes. The UCO allowed previously ineligible pregnant noncitizens to obtain public health insurance for prenatal care. Regardless of the reform, U.S.-born children of these women receive birthright citizenship and become eligible for public health insurance if their household income is low enough. Thus, the only thing changed by the reform is access to in utero public health insurance, holding post-birth coverage constant. Using state-level variation in whether and when the UCO was adopted, I find that the reform caused improvement in children's health and development. Interestingly, it only appears from preschooler ages while no improvement is shown at earlier periods. I accordingly provide suggestive evidence on one possible mechanism: the improved maternal mental health during pregnancy. In the second chapter, I study the effects of public health insurance in the prenatal period on health outcomes in early childhood. The Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 (CHIPRA) new option eliminated the five-year waiting period for Medicaid and CHIP eligibility that had been imposed on pregnant noncitizens since the 1996 welfare reform. The results show that CHIPRA new option caused an improvement in children's health. Children who were eligible in utero have a 13% better parent-reported health status compared to those who were not. Additional analysis shows that this improvement was due to the take-up of CHIPRA new option. In the third chapter, we study how an early life nutrition program affects health and economic outcomes in adulthood. The Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is intended to improve the nutritional well-being of low-income pregnant and post-partum women, infants, and children, by giving food vouchers for specific items with key nutrients. We utilize variation across counties in the date of implementation of the WIC program to identify the impact of the program on later life health and economic outcomes. Using geocoded data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we find that early life exposure to the WIC program caused a lower incidence of high blood pressure and asthma in adulthood, while no clear improvement is shown in economic outcomes.
This dissertation examines the impact of childhood exposure to public investments on later life outcomes from the lenses of changes in the political landscape due to women's enfranchisement and increases in early childhood education investments. Chapter 1, joint with Elira Kuka and Na'ama Shenhav, examines the long-term impact of women's political empowerment on children's educational outcomes following the suffrage laws in the early 1900s in the U.S. Exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in U.S. state and federal suffrage laws, we find that exposure to women's enfranchisement during childhood leads to large increases in educational attainment for children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, in particular blacks and Southern whites. We show that the educational gains are plausibly driven by the rise in public expenditures following suffrage. Our findings contribute to the first long-term estimates of a broad-based expansion of women's political power. Chapter 2 analyzes the impact of the Head Start program on academic achievement by exploiting a new source of variation in program funding intensity across local communities and over time during the 1990s. Head Start is the largest federal preschool program that provides education, health, nutrition, and other social services to low-income children age three to five and their families. Since its inception in 1965, Head Start has been a key intervention for reducing educational gaps across socioeconomic groups in school readiness. However, its impact on test scores remains unclear. Using student-level data from Texas, I find that exposure to more generous Head Start funding at age four significantly improves test scores in third grade through fifth grade for low-income children. My results show that Head Start benefited Hispanics with limited language proficiency the most. I provide quantitative evidence that Head Start significantly improves language proficiency among Hispanics, which could partly explain the test score gains in this group. I also show that the gains in test scores can be explained by an increase in both program quality and capacity. These findings contrast to the previous literature, which reports smaller or no detectable impacts on children's test scores over the medium-run and contribute to the extensive literature that evaluates Head Start's effectiveness. Finally, Chapter 3 examines the intergenerational impact of Head Start on infant health. Head Start has served low-income children over 50 years and has been shown to be a success in improving long-term outcomes of children who participated the early phases program. This paper evaluates the effects of maternal access to Head Start on infant health outcomes using Vital Statistics Natality data. Using variation in the year of Head Start's introduction in each county from 1966 to 1970, I find that maternal access to Head Start at ages three to five improves infant health for both whites and blacks, with larger impacts on blacks. It also increases the probability that a new mother is more educated, reduces the number of births, reduces likelihood of smoking and drinking during pregnancy. These findings suggest that the estimates of the returns to early childhood programs may significantly understate the total benefit.
My dissertation, consisting of three chapters, considers the role of the childhood circumstances on adulthood measures of economic wellbeing. The first two chapters analyze a large expansion of public health insurance to children from low-income families in the United States. The third and final chapter analyzes the impact of childhood exposure to lead (Pb) in India. In Chapter 1, I examine one of the largest ever expansions of Medicaid, health insurance provided by the state at very low-cost to low-income Americans. In 1990, Congress passed a bill that extended Medicaid eligibility for children living below the poverty line from age 6 to age 18. This expansion, however, applied only to individuals born on or after October 1, 1983. Using a research design that exploits this sudden change in eligibility with respect to date of birth (a regression discontinuity design), I estimate the impact that the policy had on Medicaid enrollment rates. I find that enrollment rose specifically among Black children, and I offer potential explanations for why children of other races do not enroll despite becoming eligible. This finding contributes to a large literature on the puzzlingly low usage of social programs. In Chapter 2, I continue investigating this large expansion of youth Medicaid, but I shift focus to adulthood outcomes for individuals born around the October 1, 1983 cutoff. Namely, I study incarceration. I show that Black children born just after the cutoff are 5 percent less likely to be incarcerated by age 28, driven primarily by a decrease in incarcerations connected to financially motivated offenses. Children of other races, who (as discussed in Chapter 2) experienced almost no gain in Medicaid coverage as a result of the policy, demonstrate no such decline. I find that reduced incarceration in adulthood substantially offsets the initial costs of expanding eligibility. This result provides a clear demonstration for a commonly held view that investments in children and in public health systems can produce substantial social benefits, in addition to private ones. In Chapter 3, I turn attention to a developing-country context, specifically India, where environmental factors play an outsized role in child development. I study a large reduction in ambient exposure to lead, a neurotoxic substance that is particularly harmful to infants and children. Specifically, I analyze the impact that the phase-out of leaded gasoline had on the educational trajectories of children in India. I estimate this effect by leveraging the city-by-city implementation of the phase-out in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I find that lead exposure had significantly suppressed educational attainment in India. This finding adds to the evidence that environmental factors in early life can strongly affect markers wellbeing in later life
The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.
Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.
Economics literature is interested in how child cognitive and socio-emotional skills develop during childhood. Evolution of skills is crucial to determine productivity, criminality among other social and economic outcomes. The government has a role in shaping abilities improving conditions at home or school. Thus, initial deficiencies of children in disadvantageous households can be compensated by increasing resources or material investments. These essays investigate how computers and income affect traditional measures of academic success. Also, how parental conflict is involved in a dynamic framework is investigated. The first chapter analyzes whether access to computers in schools improves performance in math and language standardized tests. Computers and in general technology are part of current living conditions, therefore, there has been a lot of debate whether they contribute to learning. Computers can affect tests because they can substitute or complement teachers and material inputs at school. The analysis is carried out using "Computadores para Educar" a nationwide program in Colombia that allocates computers in public schools. The program started in 2000 as a presidential initiative to improve access and use of information technologies. Results indicate that there is no gain on language and mathematics achievement tests. In the second paper, we focus on the analysis of how cash transfers that affect the budget constraint may have a different effect on child outcomes over the income distribution. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we analyze the impact of support assistance on children from households with low to moderate income in the United States. The data is consistent with two specifications for the relationship between child outcomes and income: a linear and linear in the logarithm. This finding implies that public programs aiming to improve math and reading achievement tests may increase transfers to children from households at the low end of the income distribution. The final chapter includes the effect of parental conflict into skill development during childhood. Parental conflict is a non-tangible input related with psychological well-being of the parents. There is evidence that conflict adversely affects cognitive and non-cognitive skill development, but this is the first study that jointly analyzes the impact on both skills. Estimates suggest that reductions in conflict benefits skills and adult outcomes. Cognitive development is more affected during early childhood and non-cognitive development for later ages. The effect of reducing parental conflict on years of education completed is similar to the effect of increasing parental time but lower than the effect of increasing material investments.
When and how do communication and history impact each other? How do disciplinary perspectives affect what we know? Explorations in Communication and History addresses the link between what we know and how we know it by tracking the intersection of communication and history. Asking how each discipline has enhanced and hindered our understanding of the other, the book considers what happens to what we know when disciplines engage. Through a critical collection of essays written by top scholars in the field, the book addresses the engagement of communication and history as it applies to the study of technology, audiences and journalism. A comprehensive introduction by Barbie Zelizer contextualises these debates and makes a case for the importance of disciplinary engagement for teaching as well as research in media and cultural studies and each section has a brief introduction to contextualise the essays and highlight the issues they raise, making this an invaluable collection for students and scholars alike.
Public History: A Practical Guide explores history in the public sphere and examines the variety of skills that historians require in the practice of public history. It discusses how through various mediums of interpretation and presentation a range of actors, which include museums, archives, government agencies, community history societies and the media and digital media, make history accessible to a wider audience. It provides the reader with an overview of the wider-world application and communication of history beyond the classroom through core case studies for each sector that include ideas for best practice 'in the field'. This book offers an accessible and engaging synopsis of a topic that has not previously been covered. By focusing on an area of study that has changed substantially in the last decade, Public History: A Practical Guide presents a comprehensive outline of the practice of 'public history', and provides ideas for future methodological approaches as well as a reference point for planning professional development in order to gain future employment in these sectors. In the current economic climate, students need to understand the potential use of history beyond university; this book contains the tools and advice needed for them to get one step ahead in terms of knowledge, skills and experience.
The fully updated fifth edition of the go-to guide for crafting winning essays for any type of graduate program or scholarship, including PhD, master's, MD, JD, Rhodes, and postdocs, with brand-new essays and the latest hot tips and secret techniques. Based on thousands of interviews with successful grad students and admissions officers, Graduate Admissions Essays deconstructs and demystifies the ever-challenging application process for getting into graduate and scholarship programs. The book presents: Sample essays in a comprehensive range of subjects, including some available from no other source: medical residencies, postdocs, elite fellowships, academic autobiographies, and more! The latest on AI, the GRE, and diversity and adversity essays. Detailed strategies that have proven successful for some of the most competitive graduate programs in the country (learn how to beat 1% admissions rates!). How to get strong letters of recommendation, how to get funding when they say they have no funding, and how to appeal for more financial aid. Brand-new sample supplemental application letters, letters to faculty mentors, and letters of continuing interest. Full of Dr. Donald Asher's expert advice, this is the perfect graduate application resource whether you're fresh out of college and eager to get directly into graduate school or decades into your career and looking for a change.