We investigate the effects of incentivizing early prenatal care utilization on infant health by exploiting a reform that required expectant mothers to initiate prenatal care during the first ten weeks of gestation to obtain a one-time monetary transfer paid after childbirth. Applying a...

There are growing concerns about the impact of pollution on maternal and infant health. In the UK in 2018, 36% of local authorities had levels of PM2.5 where exposure exceeded the annual level recommended by the World Health Organisation at the time. Using a population database of births in...

Multiple episodes in U.S. history demonstrate that birth rates fall in response to recessions. However, the 2020 COVID-19 recession differed from earlier periods in that employment and access to contraception and abortion fell, as reproductive health centers across the country temporarily closed...

We provide some of the first empirical evidence of maternal and fetal health effects of working during pregnancy by using a unique dataset from the New Jersey Department of Health that includes information not only on pregnancy and birth outcomes but also on maternal employment. We match the...

BackgroundMaternal exposure to air pollution has been associated with poor obstetrics outcomes. However, the available evidence on the impact of maternal exposure to air pollution on placental function is still scarce and is based on estimated ambient levels of air pollutants.ObjectiveTo...

The existence of large child penalties on women’s labor market outcomes has been documented for multiple countries and time periods. In this paper, we assess to what extent marriage decisions and pregnancies may explain partly these child penalties. Using data for 29 countries drawn from...

We empirically study the impact of massive and sudden school closures on teenage pregnancy, following the 2011 nationwide student strike in Chile. Temporary high schools' shutdown increases teenage pregnancies by 1.5% on average, while places in the highest tercile of strike exposure experienced...

Paired maternal and infant hair samples were analyzed to evaluate the levels and compositions of organic contaminants (OCs) in maternal and fetus in Guangzhou, China. The associations between fetal exposure to OCs and birth size were examined. Phthalate esters (PAEs), alternative plasticizers...

We examine the effect of exposure to toxic releases that are tracked by the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) on county-level infant and fetal mortality rates in the United States between 1989-2002. We find significant adverse effects of TRI concentrations on infant mortality rates, but not on fetal...

This paper estimates a quasi-structural birthweight production function using data on counties for the years 1975-1984. The analysis focuses on the effects of first trimester initiation of prenatal care, controlling for use of abortion services, cigarette smoking, birth order and income. Fixed...

We estimate marginal returns to medical care for at-risk newborns by comparing health outcomes and medical treatment provision on either side of common risk classifications, most notably the "very low birth weight" threshold at 1500 grams. First, using data on the census of US births in...

This paper proposes a new quantile regression model to characterize the heterogeneity for distributional effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy on infant birth weight across different the mother's age. By imposing a parametric restriction on the quantile functions of the potential outcome...

We examine the extent to which infant health production functions are sensitive to model specification and measurement error. We focus on the importance of typically unobserved but theoretically important variables (TUVs), other non-standard covariates (NSCs), input reporting, and...

This paper investigates impacts, mechanisms and selection effects of prenatal exposure to multiple shocks, by exploiting the unique natural experiment of the Dutch Hunger Winter. At the end of World War II, a famine occurred abruptly in the Western Netherlands (November 1944 - May 1945), pushing...

This paper provides new evidence that preventive health care services delivered at schools and provided at a relatively low cost have positive and lasting impacts. We use variation from a 1999-reform in Norway that induced substantial differences in the avail-ability of health professionals...

This paper investigates impacts, mechanisms and selection effects of prenatal exposure to multiple shocks, by exploiting the unique natural experiment of the Dutch Hunger Winter. At the end of World War II, a famine occurred abruptly in the Western Netherlands (November 1944 - May 1945),...

This paper provides new evidence that preventive health care services delivered at schools and provided at a relatively low cost have positive and lasting impacts. We use variation from a 1999-reform in Norway that induced substantial differences in the availability of health professionals...

This paper investigates the effects of immigration from a developing country to a developed country during pregnancy on offspring's outcomes. We focus on intermediate and long-term outcomes, using quasi-experimental variation created by the immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in May 1991....

We present evidence on the impacts of a large-scale iodine supplementation program in Tanzania on individuals' long-term economic outcomes. Exploiting the timing and location of the intervention, we document that in utero exposure to the program increased completed years of education and income...

In 1978 North Carolina created a special fund to pay for abortions for indigent women. The appropriations for that fund have proven inadequate during five of the years in which it has been in operation, with the result in each case that no state funding was available for several months. This...

Teen mothers experience disadvantage on a wide range of outcomes. However, previous research is equivocal with respect to possible long-term mental health consequences of teen motherhood and has not adequately considered the possibility that effects on mental health may be heterogeneous. Drawing...

Women who give birth as teens have worse subsequent educational and labor market outcomes than women who have first births at older ages. However, previous research has attributed much of these effects to selection rather than a causal effect of teen childbearing. Despite this, there are still...

We investigate the effect of education Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) on teenage pregnancy. Our main concern is with how the size and sign of the effect may depend on the design of the program. Using a simple model we show that an education CCT that conditions renewal on school...

Using an extensive survey addressing risk factors faced by the population in the shantytowns of Fortaleza, Brazil, the aim of this paper is to study interactions among different types of risk-taking behavior by youth, namely drug use and teenage pregnancy. We check the impact of factors such as...

This paper investigates active labor market programs in Austria with a special emphasis on male-female effect heterogeneity. On average, we find only small effects, if any, for most of the programs. A crucial advantage of the large and informative administrative data we use is that it provides...

Recent analyses suggest that cigarette excise taxes lower prenatal smoking. It is unclear, however, whether the association between taxes and prenatal smoking represents a decline among women of reproductive age or a particular response by pregnant women. We address this question directly with...

We use survey data that have been linked to medical records data and city-level drug prices to estimate the demand for illicit drugs among pregnant women. The prevalence of prenatal drug use based on post partum interviews was much lower than that based on evidence in the mothers' and babies'...

Welfare reform has resulted in a dramatic decline in welfare caseloads and some have claimed that a significant number of low-income women may be without health insurance as a result. The loss of insurance may reduce low-income, pregnant women's health care utilization, and this may adversely...

As many as 20% of all pregnancies end in a miscarriage - a random event that any expecting woman is susceptible to, yet the economic effects of this prevalent fertility shock have not been directly studied. In this paper, we use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97)...

The consequences of early motherhood for the offspring are severely understudied, especially in low- and middle-income countries, where this phenomenon is prevalent. Using panel data from India, this paper investigates the effect of early maternal age on offspring human capital in terms of...

Worries about the impact of COVID-19 on pregnant mothers and their offspring are wide-spread. As a comparison, the Spanish Flu pandemic had devastating health impacts on pregnant mothers and in-utero exposure to influenza is known to have negative short- and long-term consequences for children....

We investigated the effects of the timing of early prenatal care on infant health by exploiting a reform that required expectant mothers to initiate prenatal care during the first ten weeks of gestation to obtain a one-time monetary transfer paid after childbirth. Applying a...

Economic preferences may be shaped by exposure to sex hormones around birth. Prior studies of economic preferences and numerous other phenotypic characteristics use digit ratios (2D:4D), a purported proxy for prenatal testosterone exposure, whose validity has recently been questioned. We use...

Empirical literature analyzing the effect of pay-for-performance programs (P4P) for healthcare providers on maternal care and newborn health outcomes is scarce. In 2008, Uruguay’s Ministry of Public Health implemented a P4P called Metas Asistenciales (Healthcare Goals), a country-wide program...

We investigated the effects of the timing of early prenatal care on infant health by exploiting a reform that required expectant mothers to initiate prenatal care during the first ten weeks of gestation to obtain a one-time monetary transfer paid after childbirth. Applying a...