Essays on the Economics of Culture and Health

Abstract

The first chapter studies beliefs about the cause of disease and their implications for medical decision-making. Using observational data from sub-Saharan Africa and an original data collection in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), I show that supernatural beliefs about disease are very common -- 94% in the DRC -- and relevant for health behavior: They correlate with lower use of modern medicine, lower beliefs about the effectiveness of modern medicine, and higher stigma toward the afflicted. Then, I ask whether it is possible to shift beliefs and increase the take-up of modern medicine, which I answer through a field experiment in the DRC. I randomized showing an informational video about the biomedical cause and treatment of epilepsy, a prevalent disease most commonly associated with supernatural forces. The intervention shifted respondents' beliefs away from supernatural causes and toward modern medicine's effectiveness for epilepsy as well as for other conditions. The intervention reduced stigma toward those with the disease and increased take-up of free hospital consultations for epilepsy by 50%. The second chapter examines how wealth fluctuations affected religious participation in the US in the early 2000s, motivated by the "Secularization Hypothesis”. We find that an increase in local house prices between 2003 to 2012 is associated with a decrease in the time homeowners spend on religious activities compared to renters. We attribute the main result to a wealth effect, whereby activities that have an inferior-good component decline with housing wealth, and to a substitution effect, whereby the attractiveness of activities linked to the residential asset increases during housing booms. The third chapter explores the mental health of graduate students and faculty at 14 Economics departments in Europe in 2021. We find that 34.7% of graduate students experience moderate to severe symptoms of depression or anxiety and 15.8% of faculty, with non-tenure track faculty showing the highest prevalence at 42.9%. 17.3% of students report suicidal or self-harm ideation in a two-week period. Comparing these numbers to a similar 2017 US sample, we conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic can only account for part of this high prevalence.