This thesis contributes new knowledge to discussions of inequality in three
arenas and two methodological syntheses that might inform future statistical
analyses. Methodologically, the application of unconditional quantile
regression in a two-stage model is used to determine whether response bias
plays any role in the patterns observed in survey responses (Chapter 2), and,
a recent development in the program evaluation literature (the synthetic
control method) is combined with flexible parametric survival models to
identify treatment effects where stratification is perfectly correlated with
treatment (albeit under restrictive assumptions). The analyses undertaken
herein have discovered: that self-assessed unmet need for healthcare has an
empirical basis for application as reporting behaviour statistically predicts
decline in health, that the likelihood of reporting unmet need conditional on
health and healthcare utilization is correlated with the dimensions along
which social scientists might map inequality, that government programs
intended to provide a minimum level of utility are unresponsive to regional
poverty-relief efforts, and that household bargaining outcomes regarding
number of children can be predicted by exposure to a parental divorce. The
implications of these findings are manifold. First, while self-assessment of
healthcare access is a valid metric on average to overcome limitations of
needs-adjusted utilization, its use in cross-sectional analysis as it is currently
obtained in survey across many different jurisdictions is suspect. Second, the
patterns of fertility conditional on parents’ divorce suggest that household
bargaining in Canada does not likely belong to several different theoretical
frameworks. Specifically, bargaining most likely exists in an environment
where women still bear the cost of children in the event of a divorce, or
bargaining exists without commitment. Finally, while the theoretical
literature makes compelling claims about interactions between different levels
of government policy, in practice this may not be the case even if
policy-wordings seem to suggest this would be particularly relevant. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis explores three separate dimensions of inequality. First, a method
of improving measurement of inequity in healthcare is demonstrated in a
world of heterogeneous preferences where traditional methods exploiting
observed utilization are shown to be inadequate. Potential issues resulting
from response bias in the metric used in the method from chapter 1 are
investigated in chapter 2. Next, the experience of a parents’ divorce as a child
is correlated with adult fertility showing that the intergenerational
transmission of marital instability may influence decisions on family size as
an adult, specifically, only women show a change in fertility outcomes after
the exposure to their parents’ divorce. Finally, the effect of a regional
transfer intended to improve living standards for the poor is examined for its
effect on the workfare program in Ontario. The transfer is found to increase
the duration of welfare benefit receipt by two months, representing a welfare
improvement for eligible recipients.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/23446 |
| Date | 13 December 2017 |
| Creators | Gibson, Grant |
| Contributors | Grignon, Michel, Economics |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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