The mixed effects of migration: Community-level migration and birthweight in Mexico

Erin R. Hamilton and Kate H. Choi

Social Science & Medicine, 2015, vol. 132, issue C, 278-286

Abstract: Research on the relationship between migration and infant health in Mexico finds that migration has mixed impacts on the risk of low birthweight (LBW). Whereas the departure and absence of household and community members are harmful, remittances are beneficial. We extend this work by considering a different measure of infant health in addition to LBW: macrosomia (i.e., heavy birthweight), which is associated with infant, child, and maternal morbidities but has a different social risk profile from LBW. We link the 2008 and 2009 Mexican birth certificates with community data from the 2000 Mexican census to analyze the association between various dimensions of community-level migration (i.e., rates of out-migration, receipt of remittances, and return migration) and the risk of LBW and macrosomia. We examine this association using two sets of models which differ in the extent to which they account for endogeneity. We find that the health impacts of migration differ depending not only on the dimension of migration, but also on the measure of health, and that they are robust to potential sources of endogeneity. Whereas community remittances and return migration are associated with lower risk of LBW, they are associated with increased risk of macrosomia. By contrast, out-migration is associated with increased risk of LBW and lower risk of macrosomia. Our analysis of endogeneity suggests that bias resulting from unmeasured differences between communities with different levels of migration may result in an underestimate of the impacts of community migration on birthweight.

Keywords: Mexico; Infant health; Migration; Sending communities; Birthweight; Macrosomia; Remittances (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953614005577
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:132:y:2015:i:c:p:278-286

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.08.031

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().