Essays on Health Economics: The Impact of Public Policy on Health and Labor Market Outcomes

In this dissertation, I present three essays in health economics that can be read independently from one another. Chapter 2 examines the long-run impact of teenage access to family planning services on young women\u27s health and non-health outcomes. Using the state-level variation in Medicaid family planning expansions, I find that expanding access to family planning services negatively impacts teen births and has positive spillover effects with regards to education and labor outcomes. A back of the envelope calculation suggests that the benefits outweigh the costs of providing these services to teenagers. In Chapter 3, I exploit the state-time variation in the implementation of targeted regulation of abortion providers to study the impact of these laws on state-level abortion and birth rates. I find that supply-side restrictions cause a decline in abortions, an effect that persist a decade after the law is enacted, but has no consistent impact on births. In Chapter 4, I investigate the impact of school starting age on education, labor, and long-run health. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participants and variation in state-level school starting age laws, I find that males who are older when they enter school are less likely to graduate high school and report higher levels of self-reported health later in life