Teen smoking and birth outcomes
By: Mary Beth Walker, Erdal Tekin, Sally Wallace.
Contributors: Tekin, Erdal.; Wallace, Sally.; National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 13386.; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research) -- working paper no. 13386.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 31
Subjects: Teenagers -- Tobacco use; Birth weight, Low -- Econometric models; Teenage pregnancy
Description: In the U.S. teen mothers are more likely to give birth to low birth weight babies than non-teen mothers. There is also substantial evidence that smoking is a risk factor correlated with low birth weight. Low birth weight is a costly outcome in both the short and long term for parents, children, and society at large. This paper examines the causal link between teen age smoking behavior and low birth weight. We use a variety of empirical techniques including fixed effects and a matching estimator to identify the impact of smoking on babies of teen and non-teen mothers. We find that both OLS and matching estimator results yield large impacts of smoking on birth weight for teens and adults. However, when we control for unobservables through a fixed effects model, the impact of smoking on birth weight is diminished and there are relatively small differences in the impact of smoking on birth weight between teens and non-teens.
Notes: "September 2007."

Includes bibliographical references.

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