David Bradford

📢 New in Health Economics: The first large-scale longitudinal study (25,000 adults, 14 years) shows how #hope shapes health, education, work, resilience & social outcomes.

tinyurl.com/4e43zeyb @brookings.edu @uni-of-warwick.bsky.social

Woman in charge of U.S. program to traffic humans arrives in London for human trafficking summit.

To drink or not to drink? 🥂

New in Health Economics: Cognitive skills link to frequent but lighter drinking, noncognitive skills lower risky use, while social skills raise both consumption and binge risk.

tinyurl.com/3dftmvs4

📉 The ACA reduced uninsured rates—but not equally.

In the U.S. South, counties in states with less oppressive racial histories gained far more than neighbors across the border with deeper Jim Crow legacies.

History still shapes who benefits from reform: tinyurl.com/537z5ysx

Early View The Rise of Health Economics: Transforming the Landscape of Economic Research

📈 Once niche, health economics is now central to the field.

A new study shows its share in top journals tripled since the 1990s—driven not by conformity, but by innovative, high-quality research.

Health is shaping the future of economics.

Hope Walks: The Impact of Clubfoot Treatment on Human Flourishing in Ethiopia

👣 In Ethiopia, untreated clubfoot cuts children’s mobility, mental health & schooling significantly.

Early Ponseti treatment restores up to 71–82% of lost human flourishing.

A $500 intervention with life-changing impact.

Targeting Vaccine Information Framing to Recipients' Education: A Randomized Trial We study the effect of framing informational campaigns scientifically or emotionally on the vaccination uptake of recipients with different educational backgrounds. 7616 Swedish mothers stratified…

In Sweden, mothers with less schooling were more likely to vaccinate after reading scientific messages. But emotional survivor stories backfired—reducing uptake among high school–educated mothers.

🎯Targeted framing can shift outcomes.

Flu season is coming. 🍂💉

A French study shows that invitation letters & free vouchers boost vaccination—especially among the most risk-averse.

Clearer, targeted campaigns could save thousands. tinyurl.com/y7frzfk2 @universityofleeds.bsky.social

You've Been Framed: The Impact of Risk and Time Framings on Contraceptive Preferences in a Discrete Choice Experiment Previous research shows that choices are influenced by how probabilities are presented, that we value losses more than gains, and that we misunderstand cumulative probabilities over time. These…

Does the way we frame #contraceptive effectiveness change people’s choices?

New evidence shows risk and time framings—“5% will get pregnant” vs “95% won’t”—shift preferences in measurable ways.

Early View Do Stronger Employer Responsibilities Enhance Work Accommodation for Sick-Listed Workers? Evidence From a Dutch Reform

Can stronger employer responsibilities improve workplace accommodation for sick workers?

A new study from the Netherlands finds no significant impact on accommodations, but reveals firms are opting out of public insurance to manage costs themselves.

Early View Using Policy Learning to Inform Health Insurance Targeting: A Case Study of Indonesia

How can governments better target #health insurance for those most in need?

A new study from #Indonesia applies machine learning to improve enrollment strategies—showing data-driven approaches can enhance efficiency & equity.

Read the full paper here:

New research finds that Chinese-funded transportation infrastructure in Africa significantly improved child health, particularly during the construction phase.

The likely mechanism? Mothers' increased paid employment during this period. 👶🚧
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

What happens to malpractice costs when states repeal noneconomic damage caps?Evidence from Georgia & Illinois shows insurance premiums jump 📈 —especially in OB-GYN & surgery—with stronger effects after State Supreme Court rulings.
👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

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.

Craigslist Personals developed granular lists for people looking for very specific kinds of matches - and importantly it rolled out gradually over time to different locations. They collect data on Craigslist local activity from 2000 to 2010, to support a DiD from 1995-2007.

One difficulty with studying “swipe based” app effects on dating markets is that they all hit everyone nationally at the same time. In addition, there’s a decades-long secular decline in births that confound usual suspect DiD models. This is where Craigslist Personals helps.

Before the 1990s few people met their partners online; by the mid-2010s the majority of couples first meet online (more than 40% today). Christine and her colleagues are going to study the effect of online dating by going back to the beginning: Craigslist personals in 2000.

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.

As is commonly found in the literature, women more commonly take advantage of PFL opportunities, though male take-up is rising. There’s already substantial evidence that mothers and infants benefit from PFL; Wei is making a contribution by studying child maltreatment.

But, 13 states and DC have enacted PFL to compensate for federal failures. The question is: what are the broad spectrum benefits of this? State programs vary in terms of their benefit coverage, of course, and Wei chooses his diff-in-diff method carefully to account for this.

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.

They’re able to leverage staggered mandate adoption and enforcement by nursing homes across the country. Using standard DinD models they find that employer mandates do have a large effect: adoption increases vaccination by 21%; enforcement has similar effects, just faster.

Katherine et al. study these questions in nursing home labor markets. Nursing homes are a great case study because of the salience of vaccination among staff - and because (weirdly) vaccination rates among certified nurse assistants were surprisingly low.

This set up a trade off for employers: enforce a mandate and lose workers who object but the workers who remain will be healthier and more productive. So, in the end, did the mandates work to increase vaccination rates and improve worker productivity?

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.