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Season of Birth and Later Outcomes: Old Questions, New Answers

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Author Info
Kasey Buckles
Daniel M. Hungerman

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Abstract

Research has found that season of birth is associated with later health and professional outcomes; what drives this association remains unclear. In this paper we consider a new explanation: that children born at different times in the year are conceived by women with different socioeconomic characteristics. We document large seasonal changes in the characteristics of women giving birth throughout the year in the United States. Children born in the winter are disproportionally born to women who are more likely to be teenagers and less likely to be married or have a high school degree. We show that controls for family background characteristics can explain up to half of the relationship between season of birth and adult outcomes. We then discuss the implications of this result for using season of birth as an instrumental variable; our findings suggest that, though popular, season-of-birth instruments may produce inconsistent estimates. Finally, we find that some of the seasonality in maternal characteristics is due to summer weather differentially affecting fertility patterns across socioeconomic groups.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 14573.

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Date of creation: Dec 2008
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:14573

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
C10 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: General - - - General
J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends and Forecasts
J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. T. Paul Schultz, 2009. "Population and Health Policies," Working Papers 974, Economic Growth Center, Yale University. [Downloadable!]
  2. Rashmi Barua & Kevin Lang, 2009. "School Entry, Educational Attainment and Quarter of Birth: A Cautionary Tale of LATE," NBER Working Papers 15236, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Douglas Almond & Bhashkar Mazumder, 2008. "Health Capital and the Prenatal Environment: The Effect of Maternal Fasting During Pregnancy," NBER Working Papers 14428, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Maria Knoth Humlum & Rune Majlund Vejlin, 2009. "The Effects of Financial Aid in High School on Academic and Labor Market Outcomes: A Quasi-Experimental Study," Economics Working Papers 2009-02, School of Economics and Management, University of Aarhus. [Downloadable!]
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