I am a Postdoctoral Scholar at the California Center for Population Research at UCLA. I received my PhD in Economics from Brown University in 2024. I am an applied microeconomist working at the intersection of labor, health, and gender economics.
I am on the 2026–2027 academic job market.
We use a randomized controlled trial to examine how out-of-pocket costs affect contraceptive method choice, pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth among uninsured U.S. women. The study recruited women seeking care through Title X—a national family planning program subsidizing reproductive health services for low-income Americans—and randomized vouchers, making the full spectrum of contraception highly discounted or free. We find that subsidizing contraception has large and persistent effects on the choice of contraceptive method, resulting in significantly fewer pregnancies and abortions at 26 months. The effects on births are inconclusive.
Dynamic Impacts of Lockdown on Domestic Violence: Evidence from Multiple Policy Shifts in Chile
We identify dynamic impacts on domestic violence (DV) of the staggered imposition and lifting of lockdown across Chile’s 346 municipalities. Lockdown increases DV helpline calls and shelter occupancy without increasing DV police reports. These results are consistent with lockdown raising incidence and creating barriers to reporting. Once lockdown is lifted, shelter occupancy falls and police reports surge, but helpline calls remain elevated in line with state dependence in DV. We identify male job loss as a mechanism driving DV. Our findings accentuate controversy around welfare impacts of lockdown mandates. Adverse impacts of lockdown on DV are mitigated by cash transfers.
Purpose. Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant public health problem in Latin America. However, understanding the scope and dynamics of IPV has been limited by reliance on administrative or cross-sectional data. This limitation became especially problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic, when mobility restrictions likely affected help-seeking and reporting. Drawing on a new panel database, this brief report examines changes in IPV during the COVID-19 pandemic in Chile and describes features of the data and challenges associated with collection under emergency conditions.
Methods. From 2021 to 2022, we collected the second wave of a national survey focused on violence against women. The final sample includes over 3,000 women. We describe the sample and assess changes in IPV over time, including transitions across forms of violence and reporting to authorities.
Results. While victimization is correlated across waves, we observe substantial heterogeneity in IPV dynamics, with many women transitioning out of violent relationships or moving between different forms of violence. Notably, a majority of women reporting IPV in 2022 had not reported IPV in 2020, suggesting onset during the period. We also find a marked decline in formal reporting.
Conclusions. Despite relatively stable aggregate trends, IPV during the pandemic in Chile showed significant heterogeneity in individual-level transitions and a sharp decline in formal reporting. These findings illustrate how aggregate patterns can mask shifts in women’s experiences over time and underscore the value of representative longitudinal survey data for capturing dynamics in victimization and reporting that administrative records and repeated cross-sections may miss.
The Caregiving Penalty: Caring for Sick Parents and the Gender Pay Gap
The aging of the population is increasing the demand for adult caregiving. In most of the world, care for the elderly and sick is provided almost exclusively by families and, within families, by women. This paper studies the impact of adult caregiving on gender inequality in the labor market. Using administrative data from Chile, we leverage variation in a parental health shock—the first cancer hospitalization of a parent—to examine who bears the burden of adult caregiving. After a parental health shock, daughters but not sons experience a reduction in employment and earnings. A parental health shock creates a caregiving penalty—the effect of the shock on daughters relative to sons—of 11% on earnings, increasing the overall gender pay gap by 9%. These penalties affect women even if they earn more than their partners or brothers, suggesting that gender norms influence the distribution of adult caregiving. Additionally, penalties are concentrated among women who are mothers, suggesting a correlation across the life cycle between care given to children and then to aging parents.
Children with a disability are 3.5 times more likely to be maltreated. Federal Early Intervention (EI) serves 426,000 children 0-3 with a disability, 3.7% of the entire population under three. EI’s objective is to support families in caring for their children’s special needs. Compared to children evaluated but ineligible for EI, children receiving EI in the first year of life are 3.3 percentage points less likely to be maltreated later in life, a decline of 45%, with smaller effects for those receiving services later. Targeting at-risk children, intervening early, and engaging with families in a cooperative manner effectively reduces future maltreatment.
Is there a Critical Mass? Gender Composition and Behavior in US City Councils
How does gender composition influence individual and group behavior? To study this question empirically, we assembled a new, national sample of United States city council elections and digitized information from the minutes of over 40,000 city-council meetings. We find that replacing a male councilor with a female councilor results in a 25p.p. increase in the share of motions proposed by women. This is despite causing only a 20p.p. increase in the council female share. The discrepancy is driven, in part, by behavioral changes similar to those documented in laboratory-based studies of gender composition. When a lone woman is joined by a female colleague, she participates more actively by proposing more motions. The apparent changes in behavior do not translate into clear differences in spending. The null finding on spending is not driven by strategic voting; however, preference alignment on local policy issues between men and women appears to play an important role.
The Intergenerational Cost of Parental Illness: Children’s School Engagement in Chile
Severe health events are among the most common shocks households face, and in low- and middle-income countries their consequences are absorbed largely within the family. We study how a parent’s severe illness affects adolescents’ education in Chile. Using linked administrative records for the universe of school-age children and quasi-random variation in the occurrence and timing of parents’ first cancer hospitalizations, we compare exposed students with untreated classmates in a stacked difference-in-differences design. The shock reduces school enrollment and attendance and raises chronic absenteeism, with effects that persist for up to four years and roughly double for high-severity cancers. Disruptions are substantially larger for girls, consistent with caregiving and household responsibilities falling disproportionately on them. The educational response varies little with households’ pre-shock labor market position, and children’s hospitalizations do not rise. These findings point to an intergenerational cost of parental illness and a role for social protection in mitigating it.
Who is Financially Constrained? How Out-of-Pocket Costs Shape Contraceptive Use, Pregnancy, and Childbirth
The Effects of Subsidizing Contraception on Educational and Labor Market Outcomes
Labor Market Returns to Graduate Degrees
Teaching assistant at Brown University and lecturer at Universidad de Chile.