Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Booms, Busts, and Babies’ Health

Contents:

Author Info

  • Rajeev Dehejia

    (Columbia University and NBER)

  • Adriana Lleras-Muney

    (Princeton University and NBER)

Abstract

This paper documents a counter-cyclical pattern in the health of children, and examines whether this pattern is due to selection among women choosing to give birth or to behavioral changes. We study the relationship between the unemployment rate at the time of a baby’s conception and parental characteristics, parental behaviors, and babies’ health. Using national data from the Natality Files from 1975 onward, we find that babies conceived in times of high unemployment have a reduced incidence of low and very low birth weight, fewer congenital malformations, and a reduced rate of post-neonatal mortality. These health improvements are attributable both to selection (changes in the type of mothers that conceive during recessions) and to changes in behavior during recessions. Black mothers tend to be higher socio-economic status (as measured by education and marital status) in times of high unemployment, whereas white mothers are less educated. Health behaviors also appear to improve among all pregnant women, although we cannot reject the hypothesis that all health improvements among black women are due to selection.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://rpds.princeton.edu/rpds/papers/pdfs/Adriana_booms.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Center for Health and Wellbeing. in its series Working Papers with number 250.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: Mar 2004
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:pri:cheawb:250

Contact details of provider:
Postal: Robertson Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544-1013
Phone: (609) 258-4800
Web page: http://weblamp.princeton.edu/chw/index.html
More information through EDIRC

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

References

No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.

Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Is this recession good for your health?
    by Sam Watson in The Academic Health Economists' Blog on 2013-04-25 07:15:53
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pri:cheawb:250

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (David Long).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.