I’m a health policy researcher with a background in social epidemiology and urban planning. My work as a researcher at Mathematica and a postdoctoral associate in Harvard’s Department of Economics aims to understand how social policies can improve health, equity, and social mobility. Within this area, I have particular expertise in urban development and housing policy.
I earned my PhD from Harvard’s Health Policy program, where my dissertation examines the impact of housing policies and housing market trends on social mobility and health outcomes. This work is inspired by the four years I spent as an urban planner for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. At Mathematica I have worked on projects for the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS), the California Department of Aging (CDA), the Social Security Administration (SSA), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). You can find more information on my work in the projects and research sections of this site.
I’m now based in San Francisco and love connecting with people and finding new opportunities for collaboration so if you are interested in my work (or anything else), please reach out via the contact form!
PhD in Health Policy, methods concentration, 2023
Harvard University
MS in Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2013
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
BSc in Cognitive Science, 2007
University of California, Los Angeles
Funded Research
Principal Investigators: David Cutler and Noémie Sportiche
The Impact of Fair Share Housing Policies on Racial Disparities in Health and Opportunity: Evidence from Massachusetts’ Chapter 40B
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Policies for Action ($ 249,267)
Research Team: Hector Blanco, Madeleine Daepp, and Erin M. Graves
Policy Partners: Barry Keppard and Karina Milchman at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council
Selected Papers
Early-Life Health Impacts of Affordable Housing in Higher-Income Areas:
Evidence from Massachusetts Chapter 40B [Working paper available here]
Economic Crises and Mental Health: Effects of the Great Recession on Older Americans
With David Cutler [NBER working paper available here]
This paper examines the effect of the Great Recession of 2007-2009 on the mental health of older adults, using longitudinal Health and Retirement Study data linked to area-level data on house prices. We use a variety of measures to capture mental health and rely on the very large cross-sectional variation in falling house prices to identify the impact of the Great Recession on those outcomes. We also account for people who moved in response to falling prices by fixing each person’s location immediately prior to the house price collapse. Our central finding is that the Great Recession had heterogeneous effects on health. While mental health was not affected for the average older adult, mental health declined among homeowners with few financial assets, who were therefore more vulnerable to falling house prices. Importantly, health impacts in this group differed by race and ethnicity: depression and functional limitations worsened among Black and other non-white homeowners and medication use increased among white homeowners. There were no measurable impacts for Hispanic homeowners. These results highlight the importance of examining heterogeneity across multiple dimensions when examining the health impacts of economic conditions.
Can Fair Share Policies Expand Neighborhood Choice? Evidence from Bypassing Exclusionary Zoning under Massachusetts Chapter 40B
With Hector Blanco,
Madeleine Daepp,
Erin M. Graves, and
David Cutler
[Housing Policy Debate paper available here]
An increasing number of jurisdictions are passing regulations to allow for denser housing in high-income areas. This paper examines how local house prices and existing residents–who are often strongly opposed to these policies–react to this new construction. We focus on housing constructed under Chapter 40B, a Massachusetts state policy that requires all municipalities to maintain a minimum proportion of affordable housing and allows developers to bypass local zoning regulations if those minimums are not met. Using a difference-in-differences design that compares housing located near 40B developments to housing located slightly farther away paired with rich individual-level data, we provide two sets of results. First, large 40B developments lead to substantial decreases in nearby house prices, while smaller developments do not affect prices. Second, nearby residents respond by moving out at higher rates after large 40B developments are constructed, although we do not observe any significant changes in existing residents’ political participation at the state or federal level.