Born at the right time? Childhood health and the business cycle

Viola Angelini and Jochen Mierau

Social Science & Medicine, 2014, vol. 109, issue C, 35-43

Abstract: We analyze the relationship between the state of the business cycle at birth and childhood health. We use a retrospective survey on self-reported childhood health for ten Western European countries and combine it with historically and internationally comparable data on the Gross Domestic Product. We validate the self-reported data by comparing them to realized illness spells. We find a positive relationship between being born in a recession and childhood health. This relationship is not driven by selection effects due to heightened infant mortality during recessions. Placebo regressions indicate that the observed effect is not spurious.

Keywords: Childhood health; Business cycle; Retrospective data; Western Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:109:y:2014:i:c:p:35-43

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.03.014

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