Mother's education and birth weight
By: by Arnaud Chevalier, Vincent O'Sullivan.
Contributors: O'Sullivan, Vincent.
Series: Discussion paper -- no. 2640; Discussion paper (Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit : Online) -- no. 2640
Publisher: IZA
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Bonn, Germany
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Subjects: Birth weight -- Great Britain.; Mothers -- Great Britain -- Education.
Description: "Low birth weight has considerable short and long-term consequences and leads to high costs to the individual and society even in a developed economy. Low birth weight is partially a consequence of choices made by the mother pre- and during pregnancy. Thus policies affecting these choices could have large returns. Using British data, maternal education is found to be positively correlated with birth weight. We identify a causal effect of education using the 1947 reform of the minimum school leaving age. Change in compulsory school leaving age has been previously used as an instrument, but has been criticised for mostly picking up time trends. Here, we demonstrate that the policy effects differ by social background and hence provide identification across cohorts but also within cohort. We find modest but heterogenous positive effects of maternal education on birth weight with an increase from the baseline weight ranging from 2% to 6%"--Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 4/27/2007.

Includes bibliographical references.

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Mode of access: World Wide Web.