Essays on Empirical Labor and Health Economics

On Wednesday 24 May 2023 Sara Abrahamsson will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend her thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

Sara Abrahamsson´s thesis consists of three chapters at the intersection of health- and labor economics. In the thesis, Abrahamsson uses microeconometrics methods in combination with detailed registry, survey, firm and historical data to analyze topics related to individuals’ health, education, and labor market outcomes.

The first chapter studies how bans against smartphones in middle school affect students’ educational outcomes. Through a unique combination of survey and register data, Abrahamsson shows that banning smartphones from school has a significant impact on students’ average grades and their probability of choosing an academic track at high school. At the same time, schools banning smartphones experience less reported bullying.

These effects are particularly pronounced among girls.

Overall, the findings contribute to the current policy discussion in many different countries, including Australia and the US, on how to provide a good learning environment at schools in the age of smartphones.

In the second chapter, Abrahamsson studies how the introduction and expansion of fast food restaurants affect young men’s Body Mass Index (BMI) and IQ by modeling the distance between each individual’s home and the closest fast food restaurant. The consequence of the expansion of fast food suppliers could be responsible for as much as 35 percent of the increase in BMI and 27 percent of the decrease in average cognitive ability for the cohorts born during the 1980s.

The last chapter examines the intergenerational effect education and labor market outcomes following the expansion of infant healthcare centers during 1936-1955. The positive long-term effect on education and earnings among the exposed generation is extended to their offspring, but only for offspring who had an exposed mother. A likely channel for this finding is that the directly exposed women were more likely to partner with highly educated and high earnings men after the program.