Influence of Parents f Unemployment on the Health of Newborn Babies

Miki Kohara and Fumio Ohtake

No 12E003, OSIPP Discussion Paper from Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University

Abstract: Recent research has shown that low-income households have a higher probability of babies being born underweight, which is an indicator of poor health. The causes and effects of the weights of newborn babies need to be analyzed in Japan, where the proportion of low-weight babies is extremely high relative to the other OECD countries. In this paper, we use panel data by prefecture to analyze the influence of market labor conditions on the weights of newborn babies in Japan. Controlling for heterogeneity among prefectures and years as random effects, we first show that high unemployment rates among parents do reduce the weights of newborn babies. However, our analysis does not confirm the influence of poverty and low income on the weights of newborn babies. Unemployment of parents may hamper the health of a baby for reasons other than financial difficulties.

Keywords: unemployment; low birth ]weight; panel data; Japan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 J1 J2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2012-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.osipp.osaka-u.ac.jp/archives/DP/2012/DP2012E003.pdf (application/pdf)

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:osp:wpaper:12e003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OSIPP Discussion Paper from Osaka School of International Public Policy, Osaka University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akiko Murashita ().