Economic downturns and infant health

Alessie, Rob; Angelini, Viola; Mierau, Jochen O.; Viluma, Laura

doi:10.1016/j.ehb.2018.07.005

Cited by 15 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Working along these lines, a host of health economic studies have highlighted that adverse economic conditions early in life causally affect health outcomes during a person's life course. For instance, on birth weight [20], on cardiovascular disease risk [21], on all-cause mortality [22], on dementia [23] and on many others. These results call for a strong focus on conditions early in life for the prevention of disease late(r) in life.…”

Section: Health Economicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A renewed call for transdisciplinary action on NCDs

Toebes

Hesselman

Mierau

et al. 2020

BMC Int Health Hum Rights

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Notwithstanding COVID-19, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) will be the leading cause of death in every region in the world by 2030. This contribution, which forms an introduction to our collection of articles in this journal, identifies elements for a transdisciplinary research agenda between law, public health, health economics and international relations aimed at designing concrete interventions to curb the NCD pandemic, both globally and domestically.

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Section: Health Economicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A renewed call for transdisciplinary action on NCDs

Toebes

Hesselman

Mierau

et al. 2020

BMC Int Health Hum Rights

Self Cite

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“…A growing body of research supports the Barker's hypothesis (Barker, 1995), that adverse economic conditions around the time of birth have a negative effect on a variety of health outcomes over the lifetime (Alessie et al, 2018(Alessie et al, , 2019Olafsson, 2016;Dehejia and Lleras-Muney, 2004;Case et al, 2005;Case and Paxson, 2010;Van den Berg et al, 2006, 2009, 2011Angelini and Mierau, 2014). The studies exploring the mechanisms behind these effects suggest malnutrition, changes in cohort composition and health behaviors of the parents as potential explanations of the effects (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Cesarean Delivery rates rise when the economy declines? A test of the economic stress hypothesis

Viluma

2020

Economics & Human Biology

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“…Other scholars have replicated this analysis, and more recently Aparicio Fenoll and González (2014) and van den Berg et al (2016) have reached the same conclusions for respectively Spain and Sweden. In contrast, numerous studies have instead found new-born's health to be pro-cyclical (Lindo, 2011;Carlson, 2015;Olafsson, 2016;Alessie et al, 2018;Kaplan et al, 2017) 1 , or insignificantly related (Salvanes, 2013). 2 In low-middle income countries, the consensus instead tends towards pro-cyclicality of babies' health (e.g., Bhalotra, 2010;Bozzoli and Quintana-Domeque, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Unemployment Worsen Babies’ Health? A Tale of Siblings, Maternal Behaviour and Selection

2020

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We study the effect of unemployment on birth outcomes by exploiting geographical variation in the unemployment rate across local areas in England, and comparing siblings born to the same mother via family fixed effects. Using rich individual data from hospital administrative records between 2003 and 2012, babies' health is found to be strongly procyclical. A one-percentage point increase in the unemployment rate leads to an increase in low birth weight and preterm babies of respectively 1.3 and 1.4%, and a 0.1% decrease in foetal growth. We find heterogenous responses: unemployment has an effect on babies' health which varies from strongly adverse in the most deprived areas, to mildly favourable in the most prosperous areas. We provide evidence of three channels that can explain the overall negative effect of unemployment on new-born health: maternal stress; unhealthy behaviours -namely excessive alcohol consumption and smoking; and delays in the takeup of prenatal services. While the heterogenous effects of unemployment by area of deprivation seem to be explained by maternal behaviour. Most importantly, we also show for the first time that selection into fertility is the main driver for the previously observed, opposite counter-cyclical results, e.g., Dehejia and Lleras-Muney (2004). Our results are robust to internal migration, different geographical aggregation of the unemployment rate, the use of gender-specific unemployment rates, and potential endogeneity of the unemployment rate which we control for by using a shift-share instrumental variable approach. JEL Classification:E24, I10, I12, J13

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Economic downturns and infant health

Cited by 15 publications

References 48 publications

A renewed call for transdisciplinary action on NCDs

A renewed call for transdisciplinary action on NCDs

Do Cesarean Delivery rates rise when the economy declines? A test of the economic stress hypothesis

Does Unemployment Worsen Babies’ Health? A Tale of Siblings, Maternal Behaviour and Selection

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