(2023). Pediatric Drug Adherence and Parental Attention: Evidence from Comprehensive Claims DataNBER Working Paper 30968.
We study how pediatric drug adherence responds to macroeconomic shocks, leveraging comprehensive U.S. claims data and the COVID-19 pandemic. For the youngest asthmatic children, adherence to prescriptions fell by 30 percent by the end of 2020, with smaller negative effects for older children. The effect is not driven by factors distinctive to COVID, including school closures and air quality. Rather, we find evidence consistent with parental attention playing a large quantitative role. Our findings speak to the role of non-monetary factors in determining an important pediatric health behavior and to the evolution of the pediatric health-parental income gradient.
