Ethnic differences in birth outcomes in England

Ethnic differences in birth outcomes in England

Lorraine Dearden (), Alice Mesnard () and Jonathan Shaw ()
Additional contact information
Alice Mesnard: Institute for Fiscal Studies
Jonathan Shaw: Institute for Fiscal Studies

Fiscal Studies, 2006, vol. 27, issue 1, pages 17-46

Abstract: This paper uses the Millennium Cohort Study to look at ethnic differences in birth outcomes for a cohort of English children born in 2000 and 2001. There is an increasingly large literature showing that longer gestation and higher birthweight are positively associated with cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes later in life, so understanding sources of ethnic differences in these outcomes and identifying factors that may influence birth outcomes has a lot of potential policy interest. This paper shows that even after controlling for background characteristics in a number of ways, there still remain unexplained differences in both gestation and birthweight outcomes across broad ethnic groups. It also suggests, however, that there may be potential policy levers that could be used to narrow this ethnic gap in birth outcomes, such as reducing the proportion of underweight Asian mothers and overweight Black mothers and increasing ethnic minority attendance at antenatal classes.

JEL-codes: O15 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ifs:fistud:v:27:y:2006:i:1:p:17-46

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
The Institute for Fiscal Studies 7 Ridgmount Street LONDON WC1E 7AE

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Fiscal Studies from Institute for Fiscal Studies
Address: The Institute for Fiscal Studies 7 Ridgmount Street LONDON WC1E 7AE
Series data maintained by Emma Hyman ().