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Title: Inequality at Birth: The Scope for Policy Intervention
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Rosenzweig, Mark R. Wolpin, Kenneth I. |
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Inequality at Birth: The Scope for Policy Intervention Journal of Econometrics 50,1-2 (October-November 1991): 205-225. Also: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/030440769190096V Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: Elsevier Keyword(s): Birthweight; Child Health; Childbearing; Cigarette Use (see Smoking); Fertility; Mothers, Behavior; Mothers, Health; Parental Influences; Sons; Substance Use In this paper, the authors utilize information on birthweight and gestational age among siblings and maternal behaviors relevant to birth outcomes to decompose the inequality (variance) in child health at birth into those components associated with variance in endowments, the correlation between health-relevant behaviors and endowments, and the correlation between health endowments and the environmental variables influencing the household choice set. Estimations are made of: (1) the effects of maternal behaviors, including substance abuse, cigarette smoking, prenatal care, birth spacing and timing, and weight gain on the two birth outcomes; (2) the variance in the health endowment common to the two measures and to siblings; (3) the covariances between the maternal behaviors and health endowments; and (4) the variance in measurement errors for each outcome variable. The results indicate that, despite the importance of many maternal behaviors in influencing birthweigh t, a substantial fraction of its variance is due to endowment variation. This result appears to be robust to what is assumed about the relative importance of the correlations between household constraints and the responsiveness of health-related parental behavior to endowments. For birthweight, it was found, moreover, that endowment variation is on net reinforced by parental resource allocations, although this effect is small. It was also found that for the NLSY sample most of the variance in gestation is measurement error, while for birthweight the "noise" component is only one-third of the total variance. The authors reject the hypothesis that gestation and birthweight measure a single health factor, with parental behaviors influencing each in distinctly different ways. |
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Bibliography Citation
Rosenzweig, Mark R. and Kenneth I. Wolpin. "Inequality at Birth: The Scope for Policy Intervention." Journal of Econometrics 50,1-2 (October-November 1991): 205-225.
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