From the cradle to the labor market? The effect of birth weight on adult outcomes

Black, Sandra E., Devereux, Paul J. and Salvanes, Kjell G. (2006) From the cradle to the labor market? The effect of birth weight on adult outcomes. CEEDP (61). Centre for the Economics of Education, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK. ISBN 0753018578

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Abstract

Lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes, both short-run in terms of one year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings. However, recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other hard-to-measure haracteristics. By applying within twin techniques using a unique dataset from Norway, we xamine both short-run and long-run outcomes for the same cohorts. We find that birth weight does matter; very small short-run fixed effect estimates can be misleading because longer-run effects on outcomes such as height, IQ, earnings, and education are significant and similar in magnitude to OLS estimates. Our estimates suggest that eliminating birth weight differences between socio-economic groups would have sizeable effects on the later outcomes of children from poorer families

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	http://cee.lse.ac.uk
Additional Information:	© 2006 the authors
Divisions:	LSE
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Date Deposited:	15 Jul 2008 11:33
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2023 23:03
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/19425

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