Subject Area

Economics

Abstract

Health outcomes and access to healthcare are shaped by household decision-making, structural barriers, and individual behavior. This dissertation examines three key dimensions of health equity in the United States: maternal bargaining power in child health, vaccination disparities between immigrants and U.S.-born individuals, and predictors of health insurance enrollment. The first study uses National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data to examine how maternal bargaining power—proxied by the sex ratio in the marriage market—affects child health outcomes. The findings show that greater maternal influence leads to increased investment in children’s well-being and, consequently, improved health outcomes. By integrating household bargaining and health capital theory, the study highlights how intra-family decision-making shapes intergenerational health. The second study applies Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to NHIS data and finds that insurance coverage differences explain about 70% of the flu vaccination gap between immigrants and natives, with cultural beliefs modestly narrowing the gap. The third study compares predictive models and shows that XGBoost, enhanced by data balancing and feature engineering, outperforms traditional methods in identifying individuals at risk of being uninsured. Together, these studies offer data-driven insights into improving healthcare access and equity.

Degree Date

Summer 8-5-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Department

Economics

Advisor

Daniel L. Millimet

Second Advisor

Nathaniel Pattison

Third Advisor

Santanu Roy

Number of Pages

121

Format

.pdf

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Download

Available for download on Sunday, July 21, 2030

Share

COinS