Socioeconomic Inequalities in Birth Weight: Novel Distributional Evidence from Linked Population Data

Ha Nguyen

No 1765, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: This study is the first to use population-wide birth registration data spanning 18 years, linked to Census records, to examine the relationship between a comprehensive set of socioeconomic factors and the birth weight of more than 1.2 million children in Australia, both at the mean and across the distribution. Employing some of the most rigorous empirical approaches in the literature, including mother fixed-effects models, the study reports five main findings, several of which offer new insights for the literature. First, both maternal and paternal education are positively associated with children's birth weight, with stronger associations observed for maternal education and at the lower end of the birth weight distribution. Second, parental income exhibits a positive but non-linear association with birth weight, with larger effects among lower-birth-weight children. Third, relative to children living in rental housing, those born into families with mortgaged homes have higher average birth weights, whereas those born into families that own their homes outright have lower average birth weights. However, children from home-owning families exhibit higher birth weights at the lower end of the distribution but lower birth weights at the upper end. Fourth, more favourable local socioeconomic conditions are positively but non-linearly associated with birth weight, with stronger associations at the lower end of the distribution. Fifth, children born to mothers who migrated from low- or middle-income countries have lower birth weights than those born to mothers from high-income countries.

Keywords: Birth Weight; Neonatal Health; Education; Socioeconomic Status; Administrative Data; Census (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 I26 J13 J15 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/341154/1/GLO-DP-1765.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:zbw:glodps:1765

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().