 Effect of unemployment on infant healthMiki Kohara, Midori Matsushima and Fumio Ohtake Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, 2019, vol. 52, issue C, 68-77 Abstract: Japan has over several decades, witnessed a continuous decline in the birth weight, a key indicator of infant health. To estimate the impact of economic conditions on infant health with a focus on unemployment and contingent employment, this study uses Japanese prefectural panel data from 1975 to 2010 with five-year intervals. We find that, until the 1990s, high rates of unemployment increased the share of low-birth-weight babies and decreased the average birth weight; however, this trend has declined significantly after the 2000s. In contrast, high rates of contingent employment led to low birth weight even after 2000. These results reflect a recent trend of more young contingent workers experiencing lower economic welfare as compared with the young unemployed. Our results imply that the significant decline in Japan's birth weight can be attributed to unfavorable changes in the country's labor market conditions. Keywords: Unemployment; Infant health; Prefectural panel data; Japan (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jjieco:v:52:y:2019:i:c:p:68-77 DOI: 10.1016/j.jjie.2019.03.002 Access Statistics for this article Journal of the Japanese and International Economies is currently edited by Takeo Hoshi More articles in Journal of the Japanese and International Economies from Elsevier |
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