IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejapp/v16y2024i2p359-88.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What's behind Her Smile? Health, Looks, and Self-Esteem

Author

Listed:
  • Francisco A. Gallego
  • Cristian Larroulet Philippi
  • Andrea Repetto

Abstract

This paper examines how improving dental health affects economic, social, and psychological outcomes. In a randomized experiment, we provide a low-income group free dental care, including prostheses, and find significant and persistent impacts on men's and women's dental and self-perceived mental health. For women, treatment generates improvement in self-esteem, a higher likelihood of smiling when photographed, short-run improvements in employment and earnings, and improvement in partner interactions. We find no impact for men in these dimensions. Heterogeneity analyses suggest that treatment effects on labor market outcomes are larger for women with more severe visible dental issues at baseline.

Suggested Citation

  • Francisco A. Gallego & Cristian Larroulet Philippi & Andrea Repetto, 2024. "What's behind Her Smile? Health, Looks, and Self-Esteem," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 359-388, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:16:y:2024:i:2:p:359-88
    DOI: 10.1257/app.20210248
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20210248
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E159261V1
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20210248.appx
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20210248.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/app.20210248?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:16:y:2024:i:2:p:359-88. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.