Health Returns to Birth Weight: Evidence from Developing Countries

Vaibhav Kamble

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper explores the effect of birth weight on a series of anthropometric outcomes among children. We use a panel of individual-level data from 39 developing countries covering the years 1999-2018 and attempt to solve the Endogeneity using mother fixed effect and twin fixed-effect strategies. The results suggest that improvements in birth weight result in statistically and economically significant improvements in children's anthropometric outcomes. An additional 100 grams birth weight is associated with a 0.43 and 0.25 units increase in weight for age percentile and height for age percentile, respectively. The links are stronger among low educated mothers and poorer households. The observed protective effect of birth weight on infant mortality suggests that the true effects of birth weight on children’s outcomes are larger and that the estimated effects probably understate the true effects.

Keywords: Health; Fetal Origin Hypothesis; Children Anthropometry; Height for Age; Weight for Age; Birth Weight; Twin Fixed Effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D10 I15 J13 P36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-01-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-hea and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/105150/1/MPRA_paper_105150.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/105611/1/MPRA_paper_105611.pdf revised version (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:pra:mprapa:105150

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter (winter@lmu.de).