Social policy and family well-being: Essays in applied microeconomics

In the first essay, titled "The Effects of Maternity Leave on Children's Birth and Infant Health Outcomes in the United States", I provide the first quasi-experimental analysis of the effects of the unpaid maternity leave provisions of the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) on children's birth and infant health outcomes in the United States. My identification strategy uses variation in pre-FMLA maternity leave policies across states and variation in which firms are covered by FMLA provisions. Using Vital Statistics data and difference-in-difference-in-difference methodology, I find that maternity leave led to small increases in birth weight, decreases in the likelihood of a premature birth, and substantial decreases in infant mortality for children of college-educated and married mothers. The fact that I only find positive impacts on the health of children of college-educated and married women, while children of less-advantaged women experience no health benefits, suggests that unpaid parental leave policies may exacerbate disparities in child health as they only benefit the parents who can afford to use them.;In the second essay, "Engaging Absent Fathers: Lessons from Paternity Establishment Programs," I examine behavior among parents who have children out-of-wedlock. Single-mother households are disproportionately disadvantaged, and children raised in two-parent households fare better along numerous measures of well-being. These facts motivate the implementation of policies that encourage father involvement among unmarried parents. I conduct the first comprehensive causal analysis of one of the largest U.S. policies that aims to engage unmarried fathers with their families, In-Hospital Voluntary Paternity Establishment (IHVPE), and place my findings in the context of a conceptual framework rooted in family economics theory (Edlund, 2011; Browning, Chiappori, and Weiss, forthcoming). The program significantly reduces the costs of formal paternity estabishment, which is the only available legal contract that assigns partial parental rights and obligations to unmarried fathers.;Finally, in the third essay, titled "WIC in Your Neighborhood: New Evidence on the Impacts of Geographic Access to Clinics", I examine how geographic proximity to Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) clinics affects food benefit take-up, pregnancy behaviors, and birth outcomes. WIC is the major U.S. program with a goal of enhancing the health and nutrition of low-income pregnant women and children. Rigorous evaluation of the program is necessary both for policy-making purposes and for providing new estimates of the determinants of fetal and infant health. Although there are several studies that examine the relationship between WIC and birth outcomes (e.g. Bitler and Currie, 2005; Joyce et al., 2005; Joyce et al., 2008; Figlio et al., 2009; Hoynes et al., 2011), much less attention has been paid to the determinants of WIC benefit take-up. Moreover, consensus on the effectiveness of WIC has not been reached: the existing literature suffers from problems due to omitted variables bias, lack of data on important variables such as benefit take-up and breastfeeding, and other econometric and measurement issues. I employ a novel empirical approach on data from birth and administrative records over 2005-2009 that uses within-zip-code variation in WIC clinic presence together with maternal fixed effects, and accounts for the potential endogeneity of mobility, gestational-age bias, and measurement error in gestation. I find that access to WIC increases food benefit take-up, pregnancy weight gain, birth weight, and the probability of breastfeeding initiation at the time of hospital discharge. The estimated effects are strongest for mothers with a high school education or less, who are most likely eligible for WIC services. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).