The effect of paid parental leave on breastfeeding, parental health and behavior.

Little is known about the effects of paid parental leave (in particular fathers' quotas) on parental health and involvement. In this paper, we exploit a reform that took place in the Canadian province of Quebec to address that important topic. In 2006, Quebec opted out of the federal plan and established its own parental insurance plan, named the Quebec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP). This program has lowered the eligibility criteria, increased income replacement and introduced fathers' quotas. Using three data sets, we investigate the impact of the QPIP on breastfeeding and parental health and behavior. Our results show that the reform increased breastfeeding duration. The results also suggest that the policy had limited positive effects on parental health and parenting practices.

The impact of a mandatory universal drug insurance program on health behaviors and outcomes.

This paper investigates the effects of a mandatory, universal prescription drug insurance policy on health behaviors and outcomes within a public health care system providing physician and hospital services free of charge. Using Canadian longitudinal data, we show that the reform improved individuals' general health while reducing body mass index and smoking. However, the program also increased drinking and had no significant impact on mental health, physical activity, or preventive care. We also examine the mechanisms through which these effects can play a role, as well as the heterogeneous effects. Estimates suggest that the policy decreased SES-based disparities in health.

Minimum wages and health: evidence from European countries.

This study investigates the effects of minimum wage on health, well-being, and income security in European countries. The empirical strategy consists of exploiting variations in the minimum wage across European countries over time. We show that minimum wage increases improve individuals' self-reported health and income security. Minimum wage increases also improve life satisfaction and happiness. The effects are largest among women, employed individuals, married individuals, and those with less than a secondary education. Our results are robust to several robustness checks and consistent with existing evidence on the relationship between minimum wage and health.

Government Spending, GDP and Exchange Rate in Zero Lower Bound: Measuring Causality at Multiple Horizons.

This paper assesses the Granger causality between government spending and gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States at multiple horizons. This paper also analyses the role the real exchange rate plays in the causality measure during the zero lower bound (ZLB) period. Many researchers using theoretical models built in a closed economy suggest that the elasticity between government spending and GDP is very large, when the nominal interest rate is binding. Other researchers, also using theoretical models generally built in an open economy, suggest that the elasticity in the ZLB period is not large. The same conflicting results are reported in the empirical literature mostly using vector auto regressives (VARs), with different restrictions. In this paper, we use a different approach to measure the link between the two variables. The new approach has the advantage of not relying on any restrictions, as is the case with VARs when dealing with causalities. Moreover, our approach is not related to the way the model is built, as is the case with dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) types of models. In this paper, we use a Granger causality measure to compare the causality for normal periods with the causality for the ZLB period. We emphasize the role played by the real exchange rate. Our empirical results provide evidence that the causality measures between government spending and GDP are larger and persistent in the ZLB period, but only if the exchange rate is not taken into account. When the exchange rate is taken into account, our measure of causality becomes very small and non-persistent.

Unconditional cash transfers and parental obesity.

In this study, we evaluate the impact of unconditional family cash transfers on the body mass index (BMI) and obesity of parents. Our approach is based on the implementation of the Universal Child Care Benefit in 2006 for all children in Canada under 6 years of age. We show that the reform caused decreases in BMI and the prevalence of overweight and obesity in mothers with young children. We also report larger changes at the upper tail of the distribution of BMI in both lower-educated mothers and single mothers. In terms of fathers, we find that the policy had no impact on weight outcomes.