Immigration policy and birth weight: Positive externalities in Italian law

Luca Salmasi and Luca Pieroni

Journal of Health Economics, 2015, vol. 43, issue C, 128-139

Abstract: A decade ago, the political party of the Italian center-right voted a law restricting immigration. The law became effective in early 2005, when the Italian parliament approved the decree for its application, but one of its articles, granting amnesty for illegal immigrant workers, became immediately effective in July 2002. As a result, 650,000 immigrants were granted the status of foreign nationals in Italy. In this paper, we examine whether the increase in the prevalence of “regular immigrants” has led to an improvement in health outcomes of babies born to migrant women, measured in terms of birth weight. Two hitherto unexploited birth sample surveys published by Italian Institute of Statistics were used for this study. Our estimates show that regularized immigration reduced the probability of low birth weight.

Keywords: Birthweight; Immigrant regularization; Propensity score matching; Difference-in-differences; Neonatal health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I12 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Working Paper: Immigration policy and birth weight: positive externalities in Italian law (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:43:y:2015:i:c:p:128-139

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2015.06.009

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