Place-based drivers of midlife mortality: Evidence from migration in Medicaid
FACULTY SUPERVISOR(S):
Jacob Wallace and Chima Ndumele
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
It is now well-documented that where you live in the United States shapes when you die, particularly for low-income Americans. Sadly, these place-based inequalities have only grown over time, driven by increases in mid-life mortality due to drug and-alcohol-related deaths, among other factors.
Our team will be working with national Medicaid data from the Transformed Medicaid Statistical Information System (T-MSIS), among other rich data sources, to estimate the place-based drivers of midlife mortality in Medicaid. To isolate the causal effects of place, we will follow the literature in economics and use a "movers design" — i.e., we will study how the outcomes of Medicaid enrollees that move between localities change — made possible with access to data on nearly 90 million Medicaid enrollees, where they reside, and details of their health care utilization and health.
Because of the early stage nature of this project, predoctoral fellows will be engaged in all stages of the research project, including conceptual development, research design, data analysis, and review of results, and writing. Collaboration with other research assistants, graduate students, and faculty at Yale and other institutions will be an important component of the job as this project involves collaboration with faculty at Harvard (and numerous faculty at Yale).
For more information about Professor Jacob Wallace, visit https://www.jacobwswallace.com/
REQUISITE SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS:
Candidates should have a long-term interest in pursuing research in economics or an adjacent field and be completing or have completed a Bachelors or Master’s degree. The ideal applicant will have strong programming skills. Preference will be given to detail-oriented applicants with previous research and programming experience, particularly in working with large datasets, in either Python, R, or Stata. We also encourage individuals with previous experience in economic consulting to apply. We prefer candidates who can work for two years.