CPPR Health Policy Seminar: Brigham Walker (Tulane)

The Health Policy Working Group, a core initiative of the Health Policy Program in the Center for Public Policy Research (CPPR), is an interdisciplinary network of Tulane researchers and practitioners whose work focuses on a broad range of issues at the intersection of health and the social sciences.

Each semester, the Health Policy Working Group invites members, participants, and guest speakers to present their latest research and receive feedback from the group members. The group is organized by Murphy Core Faculty members Mary Olson, Associate Professor Economics and Director of the Health Policy Program, and Kevin Callison, Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management in the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. 

Brigham Walker is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. His research generally focuses on how providers, payers, and patients behave in response to new information or incentives. He is also interested in discrimination and equity topics generally.  He is a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA). 

Abstract:
Pregnancy and childbirth likely disrupt maternal income and employment, and women enrolled in Medicaid may have limited financial resources to buffer these disruptions. Evidence specific to this population remains limited. To examine changes in quarterly income and employment from pregnancy through the postpartum period among women enrolled in Louisiana Medicaid, we used a 20% random sample of Louisiana Medicaid claims and enrollment data linked to income and employment records from a national credit bureau. Among women continuously enrolled from 2017 through 2020, women whose first observed pregnancy resulted in a full-term live birth in 2019 were compared with women without an observed pregnancy. Inverse probability of treatment–weighted difference-in-differences models with individual and calendar-quarter fixed effects were used. Participants were observed from 6 quarters before through 6 quarters after the index quarter. Pregnancy and childbirth were associated with substantial reductions in income and employment among women enrolled in Louisiana Medicaid. These findings highlight economic disruptions beginning during pregnancy and continuing after childbirth.