Southeastern Health Economics Study Group

🚨 Call for abstracts for #SHESG2025 is OPEN! Abstracts: June 15. Conference: September 19-20 in Chapel Hill. Your esteemed local hosts @UNC_econ are Donna Gilleskie, Qing Gong, @JustinTrogdon, and Tara Templin. JOIN US, FRIENDS! gilleskie.web.unc.edu/shesg-2025/

The Call for Submissions for the 2026 SHESG is now live. SHESG will be held on Oct. 9-10 at the University of Georgia. Submissions from all areas of health economics are welcome. The deadline for abstracts is June 15. See the call below for more details. Submit early and often!

The Call for Submissions for the 2026 SHESG is now live. SHESG will be held on Oct. 9-10 at the University of Georgia. Submissions from all areas of health economics are welcome. The deadline for abstracts is June 15. See the call below for more details. Submit early and often!

BUT there is a lag in the effect (almost two years) and later treated localities are very different from earlier ones (less urban and greater number of non-IRL dating options).

For the #SHESG paper, they study the impact of CP on births. They use a CS DiD with one control (the RUCC urbanicity code) because of the way Craigslist rolled out. They find that the birth rate for 15-44 year old women rises after CP arrives.

We wrap up #SHESG2025 on a high note with Christine Durrance presenting work with her colleagues on online dating, dating markets, and family formation. The internet caused a major shock in the way people meet - especially with the introduction of dating-specific apps.

They use the CS diff-in-diff and exclude not-yet-treated PFL states from the treatment group. They find very significant (economically and statistically) reductions in child maltreatment after PFL benefits start. Benefits start immediately and are persistent over time.

He uses NCANDS data to understand how PFL in three states causally affects cases of child maltreatment reported to authorities over the time frame of 2002-2022. This obviously spans the COVID years. He aggregates data to the county level.

For our third presentation of the morning at #SHESG2025 we have Wei Fu presenting work on the benefit of paid family leave in reducing child maltreatment. Obviously, the US stands out among developed countries as not having national paid family leave.

Did the down side (labor frustration and disruption) materialize? There’s suggestive - though not statistically significant - indications that there may have been small reductions in part time CNA labor. These small effects mean that the quality of patient care is unaffected.

The mandates do seem to translate into lower active COVID rates of illness among the staff. Helpfully, this improvement in staff outcomes benefits residents who see associated reductions in COVID infections and deaths.

Next up at @SHESG2025, Katherine Wen presents work on employment and vaccine mandates. Katherine and her colleagues study the impact of vaccinations mandates surrounding COVID. You may remember that there was significant push-back from workers about the mandates at the time.

When the simulate counterfactual life courses they also find that the impact of transitory mental health shocks later in life on labor supply are much larger than for transitory physical health shocks. Interestingly, labor market negative shocks are smaller but more persistent.

Their model recovers the persistence of health states. But they can now determine that full time work has a positive direct effect on mental and physical health. The combination of good mental health and full time employment raises utility more than other combinations.

Hyun Soo Suh kicks off the Saturday morning session at #SHESG2025 with a paper on mental and physical health shocks and their effects of early career labor market outcomes. Their context is Australia using the HILDA panel data.