Environmental Risk Factors, Health and the Labor Market Response of Households in the United States

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorAlberini, Annaen_US
dc.contributor.advisorCropper, Maureenen_US
dc.contributor.authorVeronesi, Marcellaen_US
dc.contributor.departmentAgricultural and Resource Economicsen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2008-10-11T05:44:19Z
dc.date.available2008-10-11T05:44:19Z
dc.date.issued2008-08-04en_US
dc.description.abstractIn the first part of the dissertation, I estimate the effect of a married adult's specific health condition on his or her own labor market decisions (labor force participation, earnings, hourly wages, and hours of work) and his or her spouse's. I focus on cancer, stroke, ischemic heart disease, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. The effects differ by health condition and duration of the disease. Among married men who are working, having had emphysema for less than one year is enough to reduce the earnings of a man with college degree to those of a healthy man without high school diploma. My results also suggest that if a man has had cancer, his wife may have to compensate for the ensuing loss in household income by working more hours or entering the labor force. In the second part of the dissertation, I focus on the effect of children's asthma on mothers' labor force participation, on fathers' and mothers' labor supply, and on their hourly wages and weekly earnings. I compare these effects to those of a set of health conditions that includes deformities, congenital anomalies, heart problems, epilepsy and cancer. I find that single mothers with chronically ill children are the most affected group in terms of hours of work lost and reduction in earnings, and that fathers with an asthmatic child less than six years old work more hours per week. Then, I explore how mothers' labor force participation and hours of work affect days missed from school of a chronically ill child. I find that maternal employment is associated with a higher probability of a child missing school, and that this effect is the same for healthy children as for asthmatic children. In contrast, I find that if the mother works, then a child with deformities, congenital anomalies, heart problems, epilepsy or cancer is less likely to experience lost school days than if the mother does not work. I estimate the magnitude of these effects using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey for U.S. households from 1996 to 2002.en_US
dc.format.extent1037625 bytes
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/8557
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledEconomics, Generalen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledEconomics, Laboren_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledHealth Sciences, Generalen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledAsthmaen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledHealthen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledCost-of-Illnessen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledLabor force participationen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledLabor supplyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledLabor productivityen_US
dc.titleEnvironmental Risk Factors, Health and the Labor Market Response of Households in the United Statesen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
umi-umd-5645.pdf
Size:
1013.31 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download

Collections

UMD Theses and Dissertations
Agricultural & Resource Economics Theses and Dissertations