Three Essays on Health Economics

Zhazira Alisheva

doi:10.7273/000003118

This dissertation contains three distinct papers in health economics. Chapter one examines the heterogeneous effects of childhood bullying and chronic bullying on a wide range of outcomes using Ordinary Least Squares and Propensity Score Matching. We find that exposure to childhood bullying and chronic bullying negatively affects youths' physical and mental health. Victimized individuals are more likely to engage in risky behaviors. The adverse effects tend to increase with chronic bullying. We find no causal effects of childhood or chronic bullying on educational attainment. Childhood bullying is positively associated with social skills, whereas chronic bullying victimization is not related to cognitive or social skills. Individuals who were exposed to childhood or chronic bullying join the labor market at earlier ages than non-victims. Finally, chronic bullying victimization increases the likelihood of utilizing mental health services and experiencing life-disrupting emotional problems in adulthood. Being a victim of childhood bullying increases the likelihood of having emotional problems later in life; however, the effect is smaller than chronic victims.Chapter two focuses on measuring the direct and indirect effects of chronic bullying victimization on labor market outcomes. We find that chronic bullying victimization is directly associated with lower wages. The indirect wage penalty is driven by education, work experience, and occupational outcomes. Chronic bullying victimization is associated with fewer years of education and work experience. Victims of chronic bullying victimization work in occupations that require lower interpersonal, leadership, and independence skills. Our findings indicate that chronic bullying victimization may have a substantially larger total effect on wages due to the indirect effects than what previous studies document. Chapter three examines the relationship between a woman's mental health state and her fertility behavior. We use the discrete-time hazard model and Poisson regression to estimate the effect of mental health on the age at the first birth and the number of children. Our results show that better mental health is associated with an earlier transition into motherhood. We provide evidence that women with better mental health have fewer children. We discuss the potential implications of these results to post-pandemic fertility and future research.

Three Essays on Health Economics

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