On 10 Apr 2020, the 46th Bi-Week Applied Economics Colloquium was held via a video conference. The speaker Hao Zhuang，assistant professor in the SEM of Beihang, gave a lecture on the topic of “Medicaid Expansion and Mental Health Treatment among College Students”, which examines the effect of state-level Medicaid expansion following the 2014 implementation of the Affordable Care Act on the diagnosis of mental health conditions and psychotropic prescription drug use of a national sample of college students. He finds that students from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to report being on public insurance after 2014 in expansion states relative to non-expansion states, while more advantaged students do not see this increase. Both diagnosis of common mental health conditions and psychotropic drug use increases following expansion for disadvantaged students relative to advantaged ones, which translates into an elimination of the pre-treatment gap in these outcomes by family background in expansion states.
More than 50 teachers and students of the SEM participated in the video conference and discussed the study with the speaker. We are looking forward to the Bi-Week Applied Economics Colloquium next time.
