IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ieb/wpaper/doc2021-05.html

Terrorist attacks, Islamophobia and newborns’health

Author

Listed:
  • Grace Armijos Bravo

    (University of Barcelona & IEB & ESAI Business School-Universidad Espíritu Santo)

  • Judit Vall Castelló

    (Universitat de Barcelona, IEB & CRES-UPF)

Abstract

Islamophobia has increased in recent years which can be partly attributed to terrorist attacks perpetrated by jihadist groups. Islamophobia might be a source of stress, being problematic for pregnant (Muslim) women. We examine how stress generated by the 2017 Catalonia (Spain) attacks affected the health of newborns whose mothers are from a Muslim country (as the perpetrators). We use a difference-in-differences-in-differences model comparing newborns whose mothers come from a Muslim country and are residing in a municipality directly affected by the attacks, to other newborns, before-after the attacks. Results show that the share of low-birth-weight babies and deliveries with complications raise significantly by 23.77%, and 13.02%. We document a significant increase in Islamophobia and in emotional distress in our treated group. We conclude that one of the channels contributing to the deterioration of those newborns health is the stress faced by their mothers that resulted from the increase in Islamophobia.

Suggested Citation

  • Grace Armijos Bravo & Judit Vall Castelló, 2021. "Terrorist attacks, Islamophobia and newborns’health," Working Papers 2021/05, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    • Handle: RePEc:ieb:wpaper:doc2021-05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ieb.ub.edu/ca/publication/2021-05-terrorist-attacks-islamophobia-and-newbornshealth/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cortés, Darwin & Gómez, Catalina & Posso, Christian & Suárez, Gabriel, 2025. "Hunting militias at all cost: Urban military operation and birth outcomes," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    2. Mirza, Daniel & Stancanelli, Elena & Verdier, Thierry, 2022. "Household expenditure in the wake of terrorism: Evidence from high frequency in-home-scanner data," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C).
    3. Teresa Perry, 2023. "Did the 2016 election cause changes in substance use? An intersectional approach," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 1020-1069, November.
    4. Hiroyuki Kasahara & Weina Zhou, 2026. "Gender-Specific Effects of Prenatal Famine Exposure on Educational Attainment: Accounting for Selective Mortality," Papers 2603.01496, arXiv.org.
    5. Posso, Alberto, 2023. "Terrorism, banking, and informal savings: Evidence from Nigeria," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    6. Balsa, Ana I. & Triunfo, Patricia, 2022. "The COVID-19 pandemic and birth outcomes in 2020: The role of prenatal care and other channels," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 47(C).
    7. Romero-Ciavatto, J. Gabriel & Chirkova, Serafima, 2024. "Exposure to Islamophobia: The impacts of an increased risk of bullying victimization on human capital," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I14 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Inequality
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

    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:ieb:wpaper:doc2021-05. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iebubes.html .

    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.