Essays on Health, Gender, and Labor Markets
Creators: name: Ren, Meiqing
Publisher: name: University of Illinois at Chicago
Year: 2023

description: This dissertation is a compilation of three essays on the economics of health, education, and labor. It examines problems related to gender, family, health, and labor markets. Chapter 1: Is Health Insurance a Barrier to Women's Entrepreneurship? Evidence from State Infertility Insurance Mandates in the United States This chapter examines whether health insurance concerns create barriers to women's entrepreneurship in the United States. One in seven couples in the United States experiences infertility. Despite improved medical technology to treat infertility problems, infertility treatments remain prohibitively expensive. I study the effects of infertility insurance mandates in the United States on women's entrepreneurship, exploiting state-level policy changes that require employer-sponsored health insurance plans to cover infertility treatments. Using a triple difference estimation strategy and data from the March Current Population Survey, I find that women of later childbearing age (30-45) are less likely to be self-employed as a result of the mandates. Further investigation shows a larger effect for women lacking alternative health insurance coverage through a spouse. My results provide evidence of entrepreneurship lock, implying that a tightened link between health insurance and wage-and-salary employment could discourage entrepreneurship. Chapter 2: Preschool and Child Health: Evidence from China's Subsidized Child Care Program Early childhood education programs have been found to effectively promote children’s social and cognitive development. However, the health impact of these programs is less understood. Using a quasi-experiment of the first universal child care program in China from 2010, this paper aims to identify whether preschool attendance produces any short-term effects on health-related outcomes of preschoolers (3-6 years old). I exploit the variation in the number of subsidized preschools across provinces and implement difference-in-differences and triple-difference strategies. Results confirm the effectiveness of this program by showing a strong and positive impact on preschool attendance. This paper then documents the benefits to alleviating underweight among preschoolers. Estimates show a larger effect in rural areas, suggesting that the program narrows rural-urban disparities in education access and undernutrition prevention. I also explore the impact on caregivers' health consciousness and find that the expansion of subsidized child care has led to improved health-seeking behavior when children get sick. Chapter 3: Gender Wage Gap, Bargaining Power, and Charitable Giving of Households (with So Yoon Ahn) This chapter shows that gender-specific labor market conditions are important determinants of married couples' charitable giving in the US. Using Bartik-style wage measures, we find that when relative female wages increase by 1 SD, households' charitable giving amount increases by 26%. This impact is larger than the implied effect of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) 2017, which made significant changes in donation incentives. Moreover, charitable giving to religious organizations, which is preferred by women, increases when relative wages rise. Our results are consistent with household bargaining explanations.