Prenatal Economic Shocks and Birth Outcomes

Event Details

Date:

Monday, 11 June 2018 - Monday, 11 June 2018

Time:

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Room:

629

UQ Location:

Colin Clark Building (St Lucia)

URL:

https://cbeh.centre.uq.edu.au/

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Abstract: This paper examines the effects of major prenatal economic shocks experienced by mothers on two indicators of newborn infant health - birth weights and head circumferences. We take microdata from the extensive and highly detailed ALSPAC survey from the United Kingdom and apply regression models to estimate effect sizes. Controlling for a wide variety of physiological and socioeconomic factors, we estimate that experiencing such a shock in the first 18 weeks of gestation lowers birth weights by around 50-70 grams and reduces head circumferences by about 2-3mm.