Where have all the young men gone? Using sex ratios to measure fetal death rates

Sanders, Nicholas J.; Stoecker, Charles

doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2014.12.005

Cited by 112 publications

(79 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Currie and Walker (2011) show that women who live near areas with high traffic congestion experience worse pregnancy outcomes. Sanders and Stoecker (2015) find that prenatal exposure to ambient air pollution is also associated with fewer male births. To address this possibility we show that the effects of extreme commutes on both breakfast skipping and the fraction of male children are concentrated almost exclusively on women who are drivers.…”

Section: B Mazumder and Z Seeskinmentioning

confidence: 79%

Breakfast Skipping, Extreme Commutes, and the Sex Composition at Birth

Mazumder

Seeskin

2015

Biodemography and Social Biology

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A growing body of literature has shown that environmental exposures in the period around conception can affect the sex ratio at birth through selective attrition that favors the survival of female conceptuses. Glucose availability is considered a key indicator of the fetal environment, and its absence as a result of meal skipping may inhibit male survival. We hypothesize that breakfast skipping during pregnancy may lead to a reduction in the fraction of male births. Using time use data from the United States we show that women with commute times of 90 minutes or longer are 20 percentage points more likely to skip breakfast. Using U.S. census data we show that women with commute times of 90 minutes or longer are 1.2 percentage points less likely to have a male child under the age of 2. Under some assumptions, this implies that routinely skipping breakfast around the time of conception leads to a 6 percentage point reduction in the probability of a male child. Skipping breakfast during pregnancy may therefore constitute a poor environment for fetal health more generally. IntroductionBreakfast skipping is a common and growing phenomenon among American women. Approximately 40 percent of women of childbearing age are attempting to lose weight (Cohen and Kim 2009), and rates of breakfast skipping have grown steadily over time, especially for adolescent women (Haines, Guilkey, and Popkin 1996;Siega-Riz, Popkin, and Carson 1998). Holtzman (2010) finds that 75 percent of women aged 18 to 26 skip breakfast at least one day a week, 58 percent skip breakfast at least four days a week, and 29 percent skip breakfast every day. Using detailed time use data we find that on a given day, 51 percent of employed women between the ages of 15 and 45 report not eating between the hours of 5 a.m. and 10 a.m. 1 Even among pregnant women, 24 percent report skipping meals (Siega-Riz et al. 2001).Given the vast and growing literature documenting the profound and lasting effects of the prenatal environment on long-term health and socioeconomic success (e.g., Almond and Currie 2011), one might be concerned that the rising incidence of breakfast skipping among women of childbearing age might have important intergenerational ramifications. Pregnant women who extend the overnight fast by skipping breakfast experience a sharp drop in glucose levels and other associated biochemical changes referred to as "accelerated Address correspondence to Bhashkar Mazumder, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, 230 S. La Salle Street, Chicago, IL 60604, USA. E-mail: bhash.mazumder@gmail.com 1 This is based on the Eating and Health module subsample of the data, which includes all primary and secondary activities.Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www. tandfonline.com/hsbi. 188 B. Mazumder and Z. Seeskinstarvation" (Metzger et al. 1982). Declines in glucose levels as a result of overnight fasts of 10 to 12 hours in length have been observed in women as early as the sixth to tenth weeks of pregnancy (Mills et al. 1998)....

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Section: B Mazumder and Z Seeskinmentioning

confidence: 79%

Breakfast Skipping, Extreme Commutes, and the Sex Composition at Birth

Mazumder

Seeskin

2015

Biodemography and Social Biology

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“…For this reason, I also include an indicator of neonatal diseases as an outcome. Finally, previous research finds that adverse in utero environments can increase the risk of spontaneous abortion of boys more than girls (e.g., Catalano, ; Catalano, et al ; Catalano and Bruckner, ; Sanders and Stoecker, ); therefore, I look at the effect of the collapse on the sex ratio at birth.…”

Section: Data and Descriptive Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For this reason, I also include an indicator of neonatal diseases as an outcome. Finally, previous research finds that adverse in utero environments can increase the risk of spontaneous abortion of boys more than girls (e.g., Catalano, 2003;Sanders and Stoecker, 2015); therefore, I look at the effect of the collapse on the sex ratio at birth. Low birth weight has been criticized as a health indicator because it includes both pre-term infants and infants born small for their gestational age.…”

Section: Data and Descriptive Statisticsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Household Financial Distress and Initial Endowments: Evidence from the 2008 Financial Crisis

Olafsson

2016

Health Economics

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This paper studies in utero exposure to the 2008 financial crisis. Exploiting the sudden and unexpected collapse of the Icelandic economy, I find that first-trimester exposure to the crisis led to a sizable and significant reduction in birth weight, increased the probability of a low birth weight ( < 2500 g), and decreased the probability of a high birth weight ( > 4000 g). I also find evidence that the collapse reduced the sex ratio, indicating selection in utero due to maternal prenatal stress exposure. My results imply large welfare losses from financial distress that have hitherto been ignored - because children with worse health at birth can expect substantially lower lifetime earnings - and suggest that economic hardships may in general exacerbate income inequalities in the long run as low-income households are typically more exposed to financial distress. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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“…(Birth-weight-specific mortality rates require linked birth and death records, which are not available during this period.) The mortality effects change 35 Male fetuses are more vulnerable to in utero conditions, so the share of boys carried to term can be interpreted as a measure of average fetal health (Sanders and Stoecker 2015). Birth weight is taken from natality microdata for 1968-1979, and from printed volumes from 1950-1967.…”

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confidence: 99%

Public Insurance and Mortality: Evidence from Medicaid Implementation

Goodman-Bacon

2018

Journal of Political Economy

180

121

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Abstract:This paper provides new evidence that Medicaid's introduction reduced mortality among nonwhite infants and children in the 1960s and 1970s. Mandated coverage of all cash welfare recipients induced substantial cross-state variation in the share of children immediately eligible for the program. Before Medicaid, higher-and lower-eligibility states had similar infant and child mortality trends. After Medicaid, public insurance utilization increased and mortality fell more rapidly among children and infants in high-Medicaid-eligibility states. Mortality among nonwhite children on Medicaid fell by 20 percent, leading to a reduction in aggregate nonwhite child mortality rates of 11 percent.JEL Codes: I13, J10, N32.

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Where have all the young men gone? Using sex ratios to measure fetal death rates

Cited by 112 publications

References 58 publications

Breakfast Skipping, Extreme Commutes, and the Sex Composition at Birth

Breakfast Skipping, Extreme Commutes, and the Sex Composition at Birth

Household Financial Distress and Initial Endowments: Evidence from the 2008 Financial Crisis

Public Insurance and Mortality: Evidence from Medicaid Implementation

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