Resul Cesur

From Cradle to Classroom: High Birth Weight and Cognitive Outcomes

While the effects of low birth weight have long been explored, the literature on the effects of high birth weight is sparse. However, with increasing obesity rates in the United States, high birth weight has become a potential concern, and has been associated in the medical literature with an increased likelihood of becoming an overweight child, adolescent, and subsequently an obese adult. Overweight and obesity, in turn, are associated with a host of negative effects, including lower test scores in school and lower labor market prospects when adults. If studies only focus on low birth weight, they may underestimate the effects of ensuring that mothers receive adequate support during pregnancy. This study finds that cognitive outcomes are adversely affected not only by low birth weight (<2500 grams) but also by high birth weight (>4500 grams). Our results have policy implications in terms of provision of support for pregnant women.

Air Pollution and Infant Mortality: Evidence from the Expansion of Natural Gas Infrastructure

Natural gas has emerged as an increasingly attractive source of energy since it is highly efficient, abundant, and cleaner than any other fossil fuel. In this paper, we examine the impact of widespread adoption of natural gas as a source of fuel on infant mortality in Turkey, using variation across provinces and over time in the intensity of natural gas utilization. Our estimates indicate that the expansion of natural gas infrastructure has resulted in a significant decrease in the rate of infant mortality. Specifically, a one-percentage point increase in natural gas intensity - measured by the rate of subscriptions to natural gas services - would cause the infant mortality rate to decrease by 3.9 percent, which would translate into approximately 340 infant lives saved in 2011 alone.

WHEN WAR COMES HOME: THE EFFECT OF COMBAT SERVICE ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

This study is the first to estimate the effect of war service in the Global War on Terrorism on domestic violence. We exploit a natural experiment in overseas deployment assignment among active-duty servicemen by relying on theoretical and empirical evidence that, conditional on military rank and occupation, deployment assignments are orthogonal to the propensity for violence. Our results show that assignment to combat substantially increases the probability of intimate partner violence and child abuse. Descriptive evidence suggests that the effects may be explained in part by the stress- and substance use–related consequences of war.

Who Pays the Bar Tab? Beer Consumption and Economic Growth in the United States

Few studies explore the linkages between health behaviors and macroeconomic outcomes. This study uses 1971–2007 state‐level data from the United States to estimate the impact of beer consumption on economic growth. We document that beer consumption has negative effects on economic growth measures once the endogeneity of beer consumption is addressed. Our estimates are robust to a range of specification checks. These findings run parallel to a large body of literature documenting substantial social and economic costs stemming from alcohol use.

Combat Exposure and Migraine Headache: Evidence from Exogenous Deployment Assignment

Migraine headache is a growing problem for U.S. servicemembers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and has been linked to substantial negative socioeconomic consequences. However, there has been no comprehensive examination of the relationship between combat exposure and migraine headache or its stress-related triggers. Analyzing data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we use exogenous variation in deployment assignment to estimate the effect of combat exposure on migraine headache. We find that those deployed to a combat zone with enemy firefight are at substantially increased risk for migraine headache relative to those deployed to non-combat zones outside the United States or to combat zones without enemy firefight. We find that combat-induced sleep disorders, stress-related psychological problems, and physical injuries in combat explain approximately 40-45 percent of the relationship between combat exposure and migraine headache.

Short-run marginal medical costs from booze and butts: Evidence from the states

This article uses a panel data set of U.S. states over the 1980 to 2007 period to estimate the demands for medical care, cigarettes, and beer. The estimation process generates own-price, income, and cross-price elasticities for all three goods. Implied per capita beer and cigarette consumption elasticities of per capita health care expenditures, suggested by our baseline estimates, are 0.83 and 0.14, respectively. These results are robust to a number of specification tests. Simulations suggest that yearly marginal medical costs amount to approximately

Can natural gas save lives? Evidence from the deployment of a fuel delivery system in a developing country

12 per bottle and 27 cents per cigarette in the short run (in 2012 dollars). These results are likely to be driven by the much larger corresponding increases in the consumption of binge drinkers and heavy smokers.

Death, Trauma and God: The Effect of Military Deployments on Religiosity

There has been a widespread displacement of coal by natural gas as space heating and cooking technology in Turkey in the last two decades, triggered by the deployment of natural gas networks. We examine the impact of this development on mortality among adults and the elderly by exploiting the variation in the timing of the deployment and the intensity of expansion of gas networks across provinces using data from 2001 to 2016. The results indicate that the expansion of natural gas has caused significant reductions in mortality among both adults and the elderly. These findings are supported by our auxiliary analysis, which demonstrates that the expansion of natural gas networks might have led to a significant improvement in air quality. Furthermore, we show that the mortality gains are primarily driven by reductions in cardio-respiratory deaths, which are more likely to be due to conditions caused or exacerbated by air pollution.

The Impact of Education on Health Outcomes and Behaviors in a Middle-Income, Low-Education Country

While the relationship between adverse health shocks and health care utilization has been studied extensively, next to nothing is known about the effect of health shocks on religiosity, which may serve as an alternative to secular psychological services and interventions. Filling this gap in knowledge is important given that religious-based psychological counseling services have grown substantially in recent decades, and the relative mental health benefits of religion as compared to secular counseling services are not well-known. This study uses the setting of war to study the impact of health trauma on religiosity. Exploiting the administrative procedures by which U.S. Armed Forces senior commanders conditionally randomly assign active-duty servicemen to war deployments as a natural experiment, we find that post-9/11 combat exposure substantially increases the probability that a serviceman subsequently attends religious services and engages in private prayer. Estimated effects are largest for enlisted servicemen, those under age 25, and servicemen wounded in combat. The physical and psychological health effects of war, as well as the presence of military chaplains in combat zones, emerge as partial mechanisms to explain increases in religiosity. We find only weak evidence that combat service differentially affects servicemen’s demand for religious counseling as compared to secular psychological services.Learning to cope with man’s mortality is central to the teachings of the world’s major religions. However, very little is known about the impact of life-and-death trauma on religiosity. This study exploits a natural experiment in military deployments to estimate the causal effect of traumatic shocks on religiosity. We find that combat assignment is associated with a substantial increase in the probability that a serviceman subsequently attends religious services regularly and engages in private prayer. Combat-induced increases in religiosity are largest for enlisted servicemen, those under age 25, and servicemen wounded in combat. The physical and psychological burdens of war, as well as the presence of military chaplains in combat zones, emerge as possible mechanisms.

COMBAT EXPOSURE, CIGARETTE CONSUMPTION, AND SUBSTANCE USE

&NA; Although the impact of education on health is important for public policy everywhere, the overwhelming majority of research identifying the health returns to education has focused on developed countries. We use data from multiple waves of nationally‐representative Health and Tobacco Surveys in Turkey, and exploit an education reform that increased the mandatory years of schooling from 5 to 8 years in 1997. Using exposure to the reform as an instrument for completing at least eight years of schooling, we examine the impact of education on health indicators and smoking among young adults. We find that extending schooling on this margin impacts men and women differently. Our results indicate that while a one‐year of extra schooling increases the likelihood of being obese among males by 9.9 percentage points, the same increase in schooling improves the probability of women being in the healthy weight range by 15.5 percentage points. Consistent with this result, an extra year of education increases womens propensity to self‐evaluate their health as excellent by 4.3 percentage points. Additional analyses reveal that education makes men (but not women) more likely to spend time on computers, using the internet, and to spend time on social media, suggesting that differential time allocation between men and women, triggered by enhanced education, may be a mechanism behind the differential results between the sexes. Education has no impact on smoking for men or women regardless of the measure of smoking.