Essays in public health and early education

This thesis studies the long-term benefits of preschool interventions, the impact of promotions on heart disease, and the effects of light trucks on traffic fatalities. The first chapter examines the long-term effects of preschool interventions. Several influential experiments - Abecedarian, Perry, and Early Training - have convinced many economists that preschool interventions have super-normal returns. This chapter implements a unified statistical framework to present a de novo analysis of these experiments, focusing on core issues that received little attention in previous analyses: treatment effect heterogeneity by gender and over-rejection of the null hypothesis due to multiple inference. The primary finding of this reanalysis is that girls garnered substantial short- and long-term benefits from the interventions. However, there were no significant long-term benefits for boys. These conclusions change little when allowance is made for attrition and possible violations of random assignment. The second chapter, coauthored with Sir Michael Marmot, investigates the effect of promotions on heart disease. The positive cross-sectional relationship between socioeconomic status and health is well documented, but little evidence exists regarding the causal effect of social status on health.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Anderson, Michael L., Ph. D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David H. Autor and Joshua D. Angrist.

• Economics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34507

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/34507