TY - JOUR
T1 - Networks or neighborhoods? Correlations in the use of publicly-funded maternity care in California
AU - Aizer, Anna
AU - Currie, Janet
N1 - Funding Information:
Orley Ashenfelter, Steven Durlauf, Guido Imbens, Erzo Luttmer, Enrico Moretti and seminar participants at UC Berkeley, UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, ITAM, Princeton, the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Social Interactions and Economic Outcomes, and the Harris School provided helpful comments. Aizer thanks the Social Science Research Council for support. Currie thanks NIH for support and the California Department of Health for access to the data. None of these individuals or agencies are responsible for the contents of this paper.
PY - 2004/12
Y1 - 2004/12
N2 - This study focuses on "network effects" in the utilization of publicly-funded prenatal care using Vital Statistics data from California for 1989-2000. Networks are defined using 5-digit zip codes and a woman's racial or ethnic group. Like others, we find evidence that the use of public programs is highly correlated within groups defined using race/ethnicity and neighborhoods. These correlations persist even when we control for many unobserved characteristics by including zip code-year fixed effects, and when we focus on the interaction between own group behavior and measures of the potential for contacts with other members of the group ("contact availability"). However, the richness of our data allows us to go further and to conduct several tests of one important hypothesis about networks: that the estimated effects represent information sharing within groups. The results cast doubt on the idea that the observed correlations can be interpreted as evidence of information sharing. In particular, we find estimated effects to be as large or larger among women who have previously used the program as among first-time users.
AB - This study focuses on "network effects" in the utilization of publicly-funded prenatal care using Vital Statistics data from California for 1989-2000. Networks are defined using 5-digit zip codes and a woman's racial or ethnic group. Like others, we find evidence that the use of public programs is highly correlated within groups defined using race/ethnicity and neighborhoods. These correlations persist even when we control for many unobserved characteristics by including zip code-year fixed effects, and when we focus on the interaction between own group behavior and measures of the potential for contacts with other members of the group ("contact availability"). However, the richness of our data allows us to go further and to conduct several tests of one important hypothesis about networks: that the estimated effects represent information sharing within groups. The results cast doubt on the idea that the observed correlations can be interpreted as evidence of information sharing. In particular, we find estimated effects to be as large or larger among women who have previously used the program as among first-time users.
KW - Neighborhood effects
KW - Networks
KW - Prenatal Care
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2003.09.003
DO - 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2003.09.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:4444276396
SN - 0047-2727
VL - 88
SP - 2573
EP - 2585
JO - Journal of Public Economics
JF - Journal of Public Economics
IS - 12
ER -