In this study, we analyze the trends in filled naloxone prescriptions during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States and compare these with trends in opioid prescriptions and overall prescriptions.

Do supply-side interventions change individual behaviors? This paper examines the effect of India’s Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) on long-term reproductive health. I use large-scale survey and administrative data and exploit the variation in the number of ASHAs along with variations in the birth year, employing a difference-in-differences design. I find that the policy made women better off in terms of utilizing various reproductive healthcare services, such as antenatal care and institutional deliveries, along with an increase in contraceptive use in the long term. I find that an additional ASHA per 1,000 population is associated with a 2.14 to 5.2 percent increase in the utilization of reproductive health. This result is robust to an alternative specification with district-level ASHA utilization as the treatment. Results are heterogeneous across groups, with contraceptive use being driven by women who are richer, literate, and have less than three children during their peak reproductive ages. I find that ASHAs are associated with higher contraceptive use only in districts where utilizing the ASHA service is below the sample median, suggesting that performance incentives for the provision of family planning methods should be revised to meet the aim of lower fertility.

Daycares have a twofold role in the modern world- realizing the developmental potential for young children and allowing their parents to increase their time in other activities. In this paper, we examine the role of free daycare facilities established by the Indian government in promoting maternal employment in India. We apply a two-way fixed effects model by using the variation in the number of daycare centers located in a district and the age of eligibility of the child. Household surveys provide data on employment of mothers and child’s eligibility to attend daycare. Since the decision to work and send one’s child to a daycare is endogenous and jointly determined with women’s labor market outcomes, we calculate an intent-to-treat effect using district-level daycare availability based on administrative data. We find a positive association between maternal employment and daycare presence for eligible children. Mothers engaged in agricultural and low-skilled manual work drive this result. Particularly, mothers of young boys, with less than three children, who live in a rural household experience an increase in their employment. Child health investments are not sufficient to explain this result, suggesting that increasing the availability of daycares will boost labor force participation for mothers with young children.