Sawhill and Steinberg approach risky behavior among youth from two different angles: Steinberg argues for intervention during the adolescent years to alter behavior in ways that prioritize patience and self-regulation, while Sawhill advocates interventions that mitigate the negative effects of risky behavior. Both argue that disadvantaged youth suffer worse consequences as a result of risky behavior and therefore stand to gain the most from interventions. While the authors develop strong arguments for adolescent interventions, the existing evidence on their effectiveness is less compelling. To reconcile the promise with the reality, I argue that growing up in environments of significant uncertainty reduces the returns to forward-thinking behavior in the daily lives of disadvantaged youths. Interventions to develop adolescent decision-making skills so as to reduce risky behavior will not be effective if they are inconsistent with the incentives generated by a local environment that is often characterized by uncertainty. (JEL J12, J13)

Of the ten million uninsured children in 1996, nearly half were eligible for public health insurance (Medicaid) but not enrolled. In response, policy efforts to reduce the uninsured have shifted from expanding Medicaid eligibility to increasing take-up among those eligible. However, little is known about the reasons poor families fail to enroll or the consequences. Using a unique data set I find that information and administrative costs are important barriers to enrollment, especially for Hispanics and Asians. In addition, enrolling children in Medicaid before they get sick promotes the use of preventative care, reduces the need for hospitalization, and improves health.

Three quarters of all violence against women is perpetrated by domestic partners. This study exploits exogenous changes in the demand for labor in female-dominated industries to estimate the impact of the male-female wage gap on domestic violence. Decreases in the wage gap reduce violence against women, consistent with a household bargaining model. These findings shed new light on the health production process as well as observed income gradients in health and suggest that in addition to addressing concerns of equity and efficiency, pay parity can also improve the health of American women via reductions in violence.

Of the ten million children in the United States who lacked health insurance in 1996, an estimated 4.7 million were eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled (Thomas Selden et al., 1998). In response, federal and state governments have recently devoted up to $500 million annually to the development of outreach campaigns to increase take-up among those eligible. However, little is known about the reasons families fail to enroll, how to increase enrollment, or whether outreach can work. There is also no evidence that early enrollment in Medicaid improves outcomes. Children in need of hospitalization who are eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled are typically enrolled in Medicaid at the point of hospitalization. In addition, estimation of the impact of early enrollment in Medicaid on health-care utilization and child health is hindered by the endogeneity of the enrollment decision: children in greater need of medical care are more likely to enroll. Thus, straightforward estimation of the impact of Medicaid enrollment on child health will underestimate the effect of Medicaid enrollment on health. I examine both the causes and consequences of low take-up in Medicaid using data on Medicaid enrollment in California from 1996 to 2000 and the timing and placement of communitybased application assistants that were part of an outreach campaign launched in mid-1998. I � nd the most profound effects of outreach on those with the highest costs of enrolling: Hispanic and Asian children, who have greater language and immigration concerns than other families. Access to bilingual application assistants increases new monthly Medicaid enrollment among Hispanics by 4.6 percent and among Asian children by 6 percent on average relative to other children in the same neighborhood.

Abstract Using a unique data set linking preschool blood lead levels, birth, school, and detention records for 125,000 children born between 1990 and 2004 in Rhode Island, we estimate the impact of lead on school suspension and juvenile detention. Sibling fixed-effect models suggest that omitted variables related to family disadvantage do not bias OLS estimates. However, measurement error does. We use IV methods that exploit local (within-neighborhood), variation in lead exposure deriving from road proximity and the deleading of gasoline. For boys, a 1 unit increase in lead increased the probability of suspension from school by 6% and detention by 57%.

Abstract Over 130,000 juveniles are detained in the United States each year with 70,000 in detention on any given day, yet little is known about whether such a penalty deters future crime or interrupts social and human capital formation in a way that increases the likelihood of later criminal behavior. This article uses the incarceration tendency of randomly assigned judges as an instrumental variable to estimate causal effects of juvenile incarceration on high school completion and adult recidivism. Estimates based on over 35,000 juvenile offenders over a 10-year period from a large urban county in the United States suggest that juvenile incarceration results in substantially lower high school completion rates and higher adult incarceration rates, including for violent crimes. In an attempt to understand the large effects, we found that incarceration for this population could be very disruptive, greatly reducing the likelihood of ever returning to school and, for those who do return, significantly increasing the likelihood of being classified as having an emotional or behavioral disorder.

Access to Care, Provider Choice, and the Infant Health Gradient by Anna Aizer, Adriana Lleras-Muney and Mark Stabile. Published in volume 95, issue 2, pages 248-252 of American Economic Review, May 2005

Most Americans are now in some form of managed care plan that restricts access to services in order to reduce costs. It is difficult to determine whether these restrictions affect health because individuals and firms self-select into managed care. We investigate the effect of managed care using a California law that required some pregnant women on Medicaid to enter managed care. We use a unique longitudinal database of California births in which we observe changes in the regime faced by individual mothers between births. We find that Medicaid managed care reduced the quality of prenatal care and increased low birth weight, prematurity, and neonatal death.

We estimate the long-run impact of cash transfers to poor families on children's longevity, educational attainment, nutritional status, and income in adulthood. To do so, we collected individual-level administrative records of applicants to the Mothers' Pension program-the first government-sponsored welfare program in the United States (1911-1935)-and matched them to census, WWII, and death records. Male children of accepted applicants lived one year longer than those of rejected mothers. They also obtained one-third more years of schooling, were less likely to be underweight, and had higher income in adulthood than children of rejected mothers.

We study the lifetime effects of the first and largest American youth employment and training program in the United States-the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), 1933-1942. We match newly digitized enrollee records to census, World War II enlistment, Social Security, and death records. We find that longer service in the CCC led to improvements in height, health status, longevity, geographic mobility, and lifetime earnings but did not improve short-term labor market outcomes, including employment and wages. We address potential selection into CCC duration using several approaches, most importantly two newly developed control-function approaches that leverage unbiased estimates of the short-term effects of a randomized controlled trial of Job Corps (the modern version of the CCC). Our findings suggest that short- and medium-term evaluations of employment programs underestimate effects because they fail to capture lifetime effects and often ignore or underestimate health and longevity benefits that increase in magnitude at later ages.