IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v119y2004i3p1091-1130..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Booms, Busts, and Babies' Health

Author

Listed:
  • Rajeev Dehejia
  • Adriana Lleras-Muney

Abstract

We study the relationship between the unemployment rate at the time of a baby's conception and parental characteristics, parental behaviors, and babies' health. Babies conceived in times of high unemployment have a reduced incidence of low and very low birth weight, fewer congenital malformations, and lower postneonatal mortality. These health improvements are attributable both to selection (changes in the type of mothers who conceive during recessions) and to improvements in health behavior during recessions. Black mothers tend to be higher socioeconomic status (as measured by education and marital status) in times of high unemployment, whereas White mothers are less educated.

Suggested Citation

  • Rajeev Dehejia & Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2004. "Booms, Busts, and Babies' Health," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(3), pages 1091-1130.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:119:y:2004:i:3:p:1091-1130.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1162/0033553041502216
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:119:y:2004:i:3:p:1091-1130.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.