Download or read book Three Essays Evaluating the Impact of Public Policy on Vulnerable Populations written by Emily Rives Zier and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vulnerable populations consist of individuals who experience barriers to resources that the general public ordinarily does not. These individuals and, sometimes entire social groups, experience disparities due to personal attributes such as race or ethnicity, sex, sexual identity, age, disability, socioeconomic status, and geographic location. This work contains three essays that analyze public policies specifically intended to impact vulnerable populations. First, I utilize a difference-in-differences framework to measure the incidence of encountering a fake service dog by a legitimate assistance dog handler in states that implemented assistance dog fraud policy and states that did not between 2014 and 2018. I find that state policies are not significantly associated with reducing fake service dog encounters, and this issue is growing with time. My second essay employs linear regressions with interactions to assess whether the single or joint implementation of four supply-side policies - Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs), doctor shopping policies, tamper-resistant prescription form policies, and identification requirement policies - are associated with a reduction of opioid-related deaths at the state level. I find that states with tamper-resistant prescription form policies experience higher death rates than their counterparts, despite the implementation of policies to curb deaths. Finally, in my third essay, I estimate a series of fixed effects regressions to measure the effect of immunization policy strictness on enrollment rates for school aged children. I find that stricter vaccination policy has a positive effect on overall enrollment for children aged 5 to 9 years old, particularly for public school enrollment, and that female 3 and 4-year-olds' enrollment is more negatively affected by policy strictness than is their male counterparts'. Each of these essays explores the relationship between state level policy and timely societal issues from a unique perspective. Their findings highlight the difficulty in addressing these complex problems and offer insight into their overarching impacts.