Women's Health Issues
This session focuses on women's health. In the first paper "Assisted Reproductive Technology and Women's Choice to Pursue Professional Degrees",Sarah Kroeger and Giulia La Mattina exploit variation in state laws that mandate ART coverage in health insurance plans. Using a difference in differences strategy, the authors analyze the impact of these mandates on the probability that women choose to invest in professional degrees or go into professional occupations. In the second paper , “Physician induced demand for cesarean sections: does the convenience incentive matter?”, Mélanie Lefèvre investigates whether physicians induce demand for C-sections in the days preceding leisure periods. The paper rejects that doctors are meaningfully increasing the number of cesareans to accommodate their own preferences for control of deliveries around holiday Mondays. In the third paper, “Are Taquerias Healthier than American Fast-Food Restaurants?”, Osea Giuntella analyzes the relationship between proximity to fast-food, ethnic restaurants and maternal weight gain during pregnancy. The paper uses data on full residential addresses of all the mothers giving birth and a time series of all the food and drinking establishments in the metropolitan area of Miami between 1989 and 2009.