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The Effects of Employment while Pregnant on Health at Birth

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  • Charles L. Baum

Abstract

Today, many pregnant women take a brief period of time off from work to give birth. In this paper, I identify the effects of pregnancy employment on health at birth. My initial results show that pregnancy employment has beneficial effects. However, these effects often become statistically insignificant when I control for earnings from pregnancy employment, when I exclusively examine women employed prior to the pregnancy, and when I examine siblings in fixed effects models. I conclude that beneficial effects of pregnancy employment are partially due to increased family income via earnings during the pregnancy and partially due to unobserved heterogeneity. There is no evidence that increased female labor force participation adversely affects health at birth.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles L. Baum, 2004. "The Effects of Employment while Pregnant on Health at Birth," Working Papers 200408, Middle Tennessee State University, Department of Economics and Finance.
    • Handle: RePEc:mts:wpaper:200408
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    Cited by:

    1. Anupam Jena & David Slusky & Lilly Springer, 2023. "Occupational Hazard? An Analysis of Birth Outcomes Among Physician Mothers," NBER Working Papers 31955, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Hilary Hoynes & Doug Miller & David Simon, 2015. "Income, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and Infant Health," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 172-211, February.
    3. Jia Gao & Reagan A. Baughman, 2017. "Do Smoking Bans Improve Infant Health? Evidence from U.S. Births: 1995–2009," Eastern Economic Journal, Palgrave Macmillan;Eastern Economic Association, vol. 43(3), pages 472-495, June.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labor Supply; Pregnancy Employment; Health at Birth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics
    • J2 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor
    • J3 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs

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