Economic Downturns and Babies’ Health

Alessie, R.; Angelini, V.; Mierau, J.O.; Viluma, L.;
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: rob Alessie, Jochen O. Mierau and Viola Angelini

Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: We study the impact of provincial unemployment levels on birthweight using a sample of over 50,000 respondents from Lifelines – a cohort study from the northeastern Netherlands and we allow the effects to differ by babies’ gender. We find that during periods of high unemployment fertility decreases and male babies are born with lower birthweight. The effect of unemployment on birthweight is particularly strong for boys born to older mothers and for babies born to smoking mothers. In addition, we study whether the effects are attributable to changes in cohort composition or in health behaviour of pregnant women. Our results indicate that even though the women who are pregnant during economic downturns are more likely to have higher socio-economic status, the total effect of economic downturns on babies’ health is negative.

Keywords: Birthweight; Unemployment; Cohort Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 J11 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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