This paper contains the first infant health production functions that simultaneously consider the effects of a variety of inputs on race-specific neonatal mortality rates. These inputs include the use of prenatal care, neonatal intensive care, abortion, Federally subsidized organized family...

This paper explores the determinants of birthweight-specific neonatal mortality rates across States in the U.S. in 1980. We are able to explore the interactions between the determinants and birthweight because of the new data available through the National Infant Mortality Surveillance (NIMS)....

We use a vector autoregression to examine the dynamic relationship between the race-specific percentage of pregnancies terminated by induced abortion and the race-specific percentage of low-birthweight births in New York City. With monthly data beginning in 1972, we find that induced abortion...