Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research - Research Publications
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ItemESSAYS ON WAR, FORCED DISPLACEMENT,HIV, AND EDUCATION( 2020)The field of Economics has benefited from the great improvements in data collection we have witnessed during the last decade. We now have within our reach datasets with high precision and frequency. The availability of higher frequency data allowed for a shift from cross-sectional data to panel data—same cross-section over time. Using panel data the researcher observes the same unit of analysis over time. The main advantage is that if researchers observe then same units over time, they can control for unobserved characteristics that while unknown, can be understood not to have much variation over time. In the recent years, data with precise geographical information is allowing researchers to merge previously unrelated datasets using geographical location. The data limitations of the past are being tackled by the development of methods addressing the unknown, and new data availability—and computing power—that allows us to enrich our data by merging it with data coming from all types of sources. The first chapter of this thesis uses panel data where the unit of analysis is a 2 mile by 2 mile square observed over two years to study forced displacement as a response to conflict in Iraq. Chapter 2 uses the exact geographical location of households in Rwanda, conflict during the 1994 genocide, and other geographical features to document the prevalence of wartime rape during the genocide in HIV levels a decade later. Chapter 3 uses a panel of schools in Spain to assess the impact of a bilingual education system on student learning outcomes. Chapter 1 studies how internally displaced persons reacted as a response to violent conflict in Iraq during the war against ISIL between 2014 and 2017. I develop a network model that accommodates new data with exact geographical coordinates. The data on IDPs and conflict has a large spacetime variation that can be exploited by the estimation model. I contribute to fill the existing gap in the conflict literature regarding internally displaced persons by answering the following questions: How far from conflict do IDPs go? Where do IDPs shelter? How does conflict increase the probability of a location to host IDPs? How does conflict accumulate to trigger displacement? The highest concentration of IDPs is found within 2 miles of conflict and decreases with distance, disappearing beyond 40 miles. IDPs tend to cluster in highly populated areas, within 5 miles of a main road. Non-diverse ethno-religious areas host fewer IDPs relative to areas without a clear ethno-religious majority. An extra conflict event within 2 miles increases the probability of a grid cell to host IDPs by 30%. Forced displacement is triggered by conflict accumulating for two weeks at most. Chapter 2 finds empirical evidence of wartime rape during the Rwandan genocide. I use HIV data 10 years after the genocide as a measure of the prevalence of rape to find that HIV levels in 2005 can be explained by the intensity of the genocide in the different Rwandan districts. The findings document both the prevalence of rape- usually stigmatized and hard to measure- and its dire lasting effects on the Rwandan population long after the crimes were committed. To establish causality, I exploit the exogenous variation in the accessibility to households during the genocide. I measure accessibility in terms of the distance from these households to the main roads, the rainfall over those roads during the genocide, and terrain ruggedness. Chapter 3 analyses the impact of a bilingual education program aiming promote students’ language proficiency and communicative competence in a language other than their own. Nowadays, bilingual programs are present worldwide responding to an increasing demand partially driven by the potential personal and economic benefits from being proficient in a foreign language. However, bilingual education increases the difficulty of learning academic content due to it being taught in a non-native language. To measure the importance of this effect, I utilize standardized test data and the Spanish-English bilingual program of Madrid. The findings show a small but significant negative impact of the program on the performance of students in English-taught content. The negative effect is stronger around the median of the student’s ability distribution.
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ItemThe Impact of Paid Parental Leave on Labor Supply and Employment Outcomes in Australia(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2020-07-02)The introduction of the Australian Paid Parental Leave scheme in 2011 provides a rare opportunity to estimate the impacts of publicly funded paid leave on mothers in the first year postpartum. The almost universal coverage of the scheme, coupled with detailed survey data collected specifically for the scheme’s evaluation, means that eligibility for paid leave under the scheme can be plausibly taken as exogenous, following a standard propensity score-matching exercise. Consistent with much of the existing literature, the study finds a positive impact on mothers’ taking leave in the first half year and on mothers’ probability of returning to work in the first year. The paper provides new evidence of a positive impact on continuing in the same job under the same conditions, where previous conclusions have been mixed. Further, it shows that disadvantaged mothers – low income, less educated, without access to employer-funded leave – respond most.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableDo gender and psychosocial job stressors modify the relationship between disability and sickness absence: An investigation using 12 waves of a longitudinal cohort.(Nordic Association of Occupational Safety and Health, 2020-01-01)Objectives A considerable proportion of the working population reports a disability. These workers may be at risk of adverse outcomes, including longer periods of sickness absence. This study examined the causal effect of disability on sickness absence and the role of psychosocial job stressors and gender as effect modifiers. Methods Data on paid and unpaid sick leave, disability (yes/no) and psychosocial job stressors were available from 2005 to 2017 from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. Negative binomial models were used to model the rate of sickness absence in a year. Results In the random effects model, workers with disability had 1.20 greater rate of sickness absence in a year [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.17-1.23, P<0.001] after adjustment for confounders. The rate was slightly lower in the fixed effects model. There was evidence of multiplicative interaction of the effect by gender and job control. The effect of disability on sickness absence was greater among men than women, and higher for people with low job control compared to those with high job control. Conclusions There is a need for more research about the factors that can reduce sickness leave among workers with disabilities.
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ItemMental Health Problems and Internet Access: Results From an Australian National Household Survey(JMIR Publications, 2020-05-15)Background: Mental health support and interventions are increasingly delivered on the web, and stepped care systems of mental health services are embracing the notion of a digital gateway through which individuals can have access to information, assessment, and services and can be connected with more intensive services if needed. Although concerns have been raised over whether people with mental health problems are disadvantaged in terms of their access to the internet, there is a lack of representative data on this topic. Objective: This study aimed to examine the relationship between mental health and internet access, particularly lack of access because of affordability issues. Methods: Data from wave 14 of the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey were used (n=15,596) in the analyses. Sample weights available in the survey were used to calculate the proportion of those with or without internet access for those with and without mental health problems and more severe long-term mental health conditions. These proportions were also calculated for those with and without internet access due, specifically, to affordability issues. Multinomial logistic regression analyses assessed the relationship between mental health status and internet access/affordability issues, adjusting for a range of covariates. Results: Access to the internet was poorer for those with mental health problems (87.8%) than those without mental health problems (92.2%), and the difference was greater when a measure of more severe mental health conditions was used (81.3% vs 92.2%). The regression models showed that even after adjusting for a broad range of covariates, people with mental ill health were significantly more likely to have no internet access because of unaffordability than those without mental ill health (mental health problems: relative risk ratio [RRR] 1.68; 95% CI 1.11-2.53 and severe mental health conditions: RRR 1.92; 95% CI 1.16-3.19). Conclusions: As Australia and other nations increasingly deliver mental health services on the web, issues of equity and affordability need to be considered to ensure that those who most need support and assistance are not further disadvantaged.
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ItemPrivate School Usage in Australia 1975-2010: Evidence from the Household Expenditure Surveys(Wiley, 2020-06-01)The use of private schools in Australia has increased greatly since the 1970s. This article shows that most of the growth has been concentrated in attendance at low‐fee schools, while the growth in using high‐fee schools has been modest. Furthermore, the increase has occurred for households at all income levels, for both single‐parent and two‐parent households, for households of all sizes, and irrespective of whether the household reference person is born in Australia or elsewhere. However, increasing income and changes in household composition can account only for a small part of the trend.
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ItemROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ON IMMIGRATION(Wiley, 2020-01-01)This article is based upon presentations at the closing session of the 14th International Conference of the Western Economic Association International (WEAI), hosted by the Newcastle Business School, University of Newcastle, Australia, January 11–14, 2018. The panellists are: Orley Ashenfelter, Daniel L. McFadden, Abigail Payne, Jason Potts, Robert Gregory, and Wade Martin. (JEL J6).
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ItemAssociation between symptom duration and patient-reported outcomes before and after hip replacement surgery.(Wiley, 2020-03-01)BACKGROUND: Patients experience discomfort and compromised quality of life whilst waiting for hip replacement. Symptom duration may affect quality of life attained following surgery, but no population-level evidence exists on the impact of symptom duration on pre- and post-surgical outcomes. METHODS: National observational data collected before and after hip replacement surgery in England between 2009 and 2016 was used to investigate determinants of symptom duration prior to surgery, and the relationship between symptom duration and pre- and post-surgical patient-reported outcomes. Multivariable linear regression models were used to estimate associations between patient-reported outcomes and symptom duration, controlling for a range covariates. RESULTS: The sample included 209,192 patients; most (69%) experienced symptoms for 1-5 years. Few patients (14%) experienced symptoms for less than a year, for longer than 5 years (6-10 years (11%), or for more than 10 years (5%). Symptom duration decreased overall over the studied time period, and was shorter among males, older and less deprived patients. Patients with a symptom duration less than one year had better post-surgical pain and function (Oxford Hip Score: 0.875, 95% CI 0.777 to 0.973) than those with 1-5 years symptom duration in an adjusted model. Conversely, those with symptom duration exceeding five years had increasingly poorer post-surgical outcomes (Oxford Hip Score: 6-10 years -0.730, 95% CI -0.847 to -0.613; >10 years -1.112, 95% CI -1.278 to -0.946). CONCLUSION: Symptom duration prior to hip replacement has become more standardised in England over time but increasing duration remains a significant predictor of poorer outcome after surgery.
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ItemAre Professors Worth It? The Value-added and Costs of Tutorial Instructors(University of Wisconsin Press, 2020)A substantial share of university instruction happens in tutorial sessions— small group instruction given parallel to lectures. In this paper, we study whether instructors with a higher academic rank teach tutorials more effectively in a setting where students are randomly assigned to tutorial groups. We find this to be largely not the case. Academic rank is unrelated to students’ current and future performance and only weakly positively related to students’ course evaluations. Building on these results, we discuss different staffing scenarios that show that universities can substantially reduce costs by increasingly relying on lower-ranked instructors for tutorial teaching.
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ItemPerspectives on Poverty in Europe. Following in Tony Atkinson’s Footsteps(Springer Verlag, 2020-03-01)I address four topics: how our capacities to monitor poverty in Europe have improved substantially over recent decades; how progress on EU poverty reduction has been disappointing and why this has been; conceptual and measurement issues; and the future direction of EU-level anti-poverty actions. I follow in the footsteps of a giant—my perspectives are essentially elaborations of points made by Tony Atkinson.