We give two characterizations for the essential self-adjointness of the weighted Laplacian on birth-death chains. The first involves the edge weights and vertex measure and is classically known; however, we give another proof using stability results, limit point-limit circle theory and the connection between essential self-adjointness and harmonic functions. The second characterization involves a new notion of capacity. Furthermore, we also analyze the essential self-adjointness of Schr\"odinger operators, use the characterizations for birth-death chains and stability results to characterize essential self-adjointness for star-like graphs, and give some connections to the $\ell^2$-Liouville property.
