Essays in the economics of education, children and family
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation consists of three distinct essays in the economics of education, children and family. The first essay evaluates the effectiveness of carbonated beverage bans in schools by investigating their impact on household carbonated beverage consumption. I match households in Nielsen Homescan Data to their school district's carbonated beverage policies over the last 10 years. I find that when high schools ban the sale of carbonated beverages to students, households with a high school student experiencing the ban increase their consumption of non-diet carbonated beverages by roughly the equivalent of 3.5 cans per month. I present evidence that the average high school student consumes roughly 4.5 cans of non-diet soda per month in school, when carbonated beverages are available. Thus, the results suggest that the drop in student school consumption is substantially offset by increased household consumption. The second essay explores the effectiveness of motivating students to improve their academic performance through conditioning various privileges. I show that conditioning the privilege of going off campus during the school day on certain academic (GPA, test scores, etc.) or behavioral (absences, probation, etc.) criteria improves high school students' test scores and decreases their dropout rates. These results shed light on student incentive programs intended to increase academic performance. The third essay asks how conditioning a monetary benefit on individuals' family status can create distortions, even in individuals' seemingly personal decisions, such as the birth of a child. I exploit a 21-month lag between announcing California's introduction of the first paid parental leave program in the United States and its scheduled implementation to evaluate whether women timed their pregnancies in order to be eligible for the expected benefit. Using natality data, documenting all births in the United States, I show that the distribution of California births in 2004 significantly shifted from the first half of the year to the second half of the year, immediately after the program's implementation. While the effect is present for all population segments of new mothers, it is largest for disadvantaged mothers - with lower education levels, of Hispanic origin, younger, and not married.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2013 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Lichtman, Shirlee |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Economics. |
| Primary advisor | Harding, Matthew C |
| Thesis advisor | Harding, Matthew C |
| Thesis advisor | Abramitzky, Ran |
| Thesis advisor | Hoxby, Caroline Minter |
| Advisor | Abramitzky, Ran |
| Advisor | Hoxby, Caroline Minter |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Shirlee Lichtman. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Economics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2013. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2013 by Shirlee Lichtman
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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