Social Spending and Educational Gaps in Infant Health in the United States, 1998–2017

Abstract

Recent expansions of child tax, food assistance, and health insurance programs have made American families’ need for a robust social safety net highly evident, while researchers and policymakers continue to debate the best way to support families via the welfare state. How much do children—and which children—benefit from social spending? Using the State-by-State Spending on Kids Dataset, linked to National Vital Statistics System birth data from 1998 to 2017, we examine how state-level child spending affects infant health across maternal education groups. We find that social spending has benefits for both low birth weight and preterm birth rates, especially among babies born to mothers with less than a high school education. The stronger benefits of social spending among lower educated families lead to meaningful declines in educational gaps in infant health as social spending increases. Our findings are consistent with the idea that a strong local welfare state benefits infant health and increases equality of opportunity, and that spending on nonhealth programs is equally beneficial for infant health as investments in health programs.

Refueling a Quiet Fire: Old Truthers and New Discontent in the Wake of Covid-19

“…Our evidence might present an important contribution to the literature that provides empirical evidence on the beneficial role of both education and income for health outcomes (e.g. Baker et al, 2017, Jackson et al, 2022, Montez et al, 2019. We show that in the case of attitudes towards public health policies, the gradient in terms of socio-demographics characteristics is not monotonic, which is also consistent with several papers that study preventive behavior in terms of vaccination or compliance with stay-at-home orders Drummond andFischhoff (2017), MacDonald et al (2015).…”

“…From this standpoint, our contribution aligns with the extensive and continually developing body of literature, which demonstrates that, all else being equal, higher educational achievement and income levels are associated with improved health and longevity. This relationship has been well-documented in influential seminal papers, including works by Baker et al (2017), Jackson et al (2022), Montez et al (2019). Furthermore, we evaluate the influence of pre-existing anti-vaccination sentiments expressed on Twitter before the pandemic on the likelihood of harboring skepticism about COVID.…”