Newborn Health and the Business Cycle: Is it Good to Be Born in Bad Times?

Terrorism and Human Capital at Birth: Bomb Casualties and Birth Outcomes in Spain

“…First, our estimates are (almost) identical to those in Table 2 (panel C). Second, babies exposed to high unemployment rates (in the first trimester of pregnancy) have a reduced incidence of low birth weight -a finding consistent with the empirical evidence in the US (Deheija and Lleras-Muney, 2004) and Spain (Aparicio and González, 2013)-, tend to have a higher average birth weight, and are more likely to have a normal delivery (without complications).…”

“…Aparicio and González (2013) find that in Spain babies are born healthier when the local unemployment rate is high.15 They exploit variation in mother's education and trimester of exposure to put forward tentative explanations in terms of maternal stress (affecting both low-and high-educated women) and nutrition (affecting only low-educated women).…”

The local health impacts of natural resource booms

“…Several studies investigate recessions and mortality outcomes, but a small set focuses on short‐term economic expansions or other measures of health at birth. In line with evidence from developed (Aparicio & González Luna, 2013 ; Dehejia & Lleras‐Muney, 2004 ) and developing (Baird et al., 2011 ; Bhalotra, 2010 ; Bozzoli & Quintana‐Domeque, 2014 ; Paxson & Schady, 2005 ) countries, this study finds that the measures of health at birth explored are countercyclical , while health‐care utilization is procyclical . As little is known about the precise mechanisms of this relationship (Bellés‐Obrero & Castello, 2018 ), it is worth noting that the deterioration of health following natural resource booms is not due to the increase in the opportunity cost of time during the economic expansion, but it is primarily driven by pollution.…”

Education and Later-life Mortality: Evidence from a School Reform in Japan

“…13 Our results are robust to using the data only after the school reform as the control cohorts (not shown). We choose the current approach to keep the samples for estimating equations [1] and [2] as close as possible.…”

“…Such children could benefit the most from improved labor market opportunities, knowledge acquired from additional schooling, and better peers. 2 This situation sharply contrasts with other compulsory schooling reform settings, in which students-who would have dropped out of secondary education exactly at the minimum school-leaving age in the absence of the reform-are compelled to remain in school; hence, the monetary and health returns from more schooling could be small. Second, the incremental years of schooling are as many as 3 years from grades 7 to 9, unlike most previous studies that mostly examine compulsory schooling extended by 1 year, such as the school reform in the UK.…”