Libertad González

Family policies and child health and development

Libertad González is currently working on evaluating and comparing the impact of different family policies on child health and cognitive development. Specifically, she is examining several reforms in parental leave policies and child benefits that were enacted in Spain in the 2000s. She uses a regression discontinuity approach based on date of birth to estimate the effects of those policies on health outcomes and test scores, using administrative data. She is also studying the effect of abortion regulation on long-term outcomes for women, by examining the legalization of abortion in Spain in 1985.

Ms González’s research lies in the areas of labor, public and health economics. She has published in many prestigious journals, including the Journal of the European Economic Association, the Journal of Public Economics, the American Economic Journal - Economic Policy, the Journal of Human Resources. She is currently the holder of an ERC Consolidator grant, with a project focused on estimating the effects of very early interventions on child human capital development.

Libertad González is Associate Professor of Economics with tenure at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. She received her PhD from Northwestern University in 2003 and has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University and Boston University. She is also a Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) in Bonn.