On Monday, January 18 2021, 16:00 - 17:30, Stefanie Schurer (University of Sydney) will present:
Unintended Consequences of Welfare Reform: Evidence from Birth Outcomes of Aboriginal Australians
In 2007, Australia introduced its most radical welfare reform in recent history, targeting Aboriginal communities with the aim of addressing the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage. The ‘income management’ policy forces Aboriginal welfare recipients to spend at least half of their government transfers on essentials (e.g. food, housing). We estimate the policy’s impact on birth outcomes by exploiting its staggered rollout. Our estimates suggest that exposure to income management reduced average birthweight by 95 grams and increased the probability of low birthweight by 3 percentage points. We show that this finding is not explained by changes in maternal behavior or access to care. More likely, the policy rules led to income insecurity, escalating the inequalities that the policy aimed to address.
Room: Due to the current situation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the talk will be held in a virtual seminar room. For more information click here.
On Monday, January 11 2021, 16:00 - 17:30, Stefan Kohler (University of Heidelberg) will present:
Import Costs of Medical Supplies: A Framework for Import Cost Accounting and Results for a Tuberculosis Program in Uzbekistan
Import of medical supplies is common but the import costs of health programs and specific imported medical supplies remains largely unexplored. Limited knowledge about import costs and their structure introduces uncertainty to budget planning, cost management and cost-effectiveness analysis of health programs. We used cost accounting to estimate, firstly, the average import costs of a tuberculosis (TB) program in Uzbekistan, secondly, the import costs of individual medical supply items and, thirdly, the cost that drug import added to cost of a TB drug regimen.
Room: Due to the current situation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the talk will be held in a virtual seminar room. For more information click here.
On Monday, December 21 2020, 16:00 - 17:30, Sophie Guthmuller (Vienna University of Economics and Business) will present:
The Impact of Breast Cancer Organised Screening Programmes on Uptake, Inequality, and Mortality
We study the impact of Organised Screening Programmes (OSP) for Breast Cancer in Europe on mammography uptake, inequality, and mortality. When an OSP is in place, all women within a certainage group receive, every two years, an invitation for free breast screening. To identify the causal impact of this invitation, we exploit the heterogeneity across European regions in the availability of OSP and in the age eligibility across regions with OSP. Our analysis is based on three data sources: (1) regional information on OSP, (2) individual information on mammography uptake, socioeconomic characteristics, health, and lifestyle related risk factors of women in 21 European countries, and (3) cancer registry data on breast cancer incidence, and mortality. We find new evidence that screening increases by more than 30 percentage points when women are invited. First results from the heterogeneity analysis show that women that respond to the invitation are those at higher risk of developing cancer and those with low preventive healthcare habits. Thus, OSP with a personal invitation manage to reach asymptomatic women at higher risk of developing cancer and with low preventive healthcare habits, i.e. women that are less likely to go for a mammography otherwise. Further analyses will investigate the impact of OSP on socioeconomic inequalities, breast cancer incidence, and mortality.
Room: Due to the current situation regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the talk will be held in a virtual seminar room. For more information click here.
