UCLA

This dissertation studies the effectiveness of public policies aimed at improving population health and narrowing health disparities. It is divided into three chapters. Chapter one provides new evidence on the health effects of cash transfers for people with disabilities. The chapter evaluates the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Disability Compensation program, one of the nation’s largest cash transfer programs. To accomplish this, a large administrative dataset is compiled by combining disability claims, medical records, and death records for over 800,000 veterans. The empirical strategy leverages the quasi-random assignment of disability claims to examining caseworkers and physicians, comparing veterans whose disability claims were assigned to examiners with varying levels of leniency. The results indicate that receiving $300 per month lowers five-year mortality by 0.8 percentage points, or 9.5% of the mean rate.

The second chapter analyzes the prescribing behavior of nurse practitioners (NPs) and primary care physicians in states that allow NPs to prescribe medications independently. Inappropriate prescriptions are defined as drugs that are generally considered inappropriate for adults aged 65 years or older, according to the American Geriatrics Society’s Beers Criteria. The mean rates of inappropriate prescribing by NPs and primary care physicians are nearly the same. However, NPs are overrepresented among clinicians with the highest and lowest rates of inappropriate prescribing.

The third chapter examines the adverse motivational effects of monetary incentives for vaccines. A survey experiment was conducted among 513 vaccine-hesitant adults between May and September 2021, priming half with the idea of monetary incentives for the COVID-19 vaccine. The findings show that monetary incentives discourage 14% of participants from getting vaccinated, a significant reduction since only one in four considered getting vaccinated at the outset. Participants in the primed group are more likely to believe that vaccines are unsafe and more likely to believe that people do not have a responsibility to get vaccinated, compared to participants in the control group.