Fear itself: The effects of distressing economic news on birth outcomes

Kyle Carlson

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: I use new administrative data on mass layoffs and plant closings to study the effects of distressing economic news. Exposure to stressful events during pregnancy can impair fetal development. I find that announcement of impending job losses leads to a transient decrease in the mean birth weight within the firm’s county 1–4 months before the job losses. A loss of 500 jobs corresponds roughly to a decrease of 15–20 grams and 16 percent greater risk of low birth weight. Further analyses show that the initial effect results from curtailment of gestation, while slower intrauterine growth plays a later role.

Keywords: health; birth weight; gestation; layoffs; warn; stress; prenatal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I12 J00 J01 J08 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-03-13
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/56560/1/MPRA_paper_56560.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Fear itself: The effects of distressing economic news on birth outcomes (2015)
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:56560

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 ().