The Timing of Births:
نویسندگان
چکیده
This paper examines whether there is a counter-cyclical pattern in the quality of children. In particular, we study the relationship between the unemployment rate and several measures of parental characteristics, parental behavior behavior, and child health. Using data from the Natality files, including panel level data of mothers, we find evidence of positive, counter-cyclical variation in babies health: when unemployment is high at the time of conception, babies are healthier at birth. Part of these improvements is due to improvements in maternal behaviors in recessions, such as greater use of prenatal care. However there is also a large part that is due to selection in the timing of births. In particular, we find evidence that low educated black mothers do not have children during recessions due to credit constraints, where as the opposite is true of white mothers, who tend to become pregnant when unemployment is high, due to lower opportunity cost. Overall we find that babies are healthier, and that this effect is greater for blacks than for whites, which is consistent with improved behavior of all, but opposite selection between black and whites. Version: First draft: June 2, 2003 This version: October 15, 2003 * We are grateful to Orley Ashenfelter, Marianne Bertrand, Sherry Glied, Caroline Hoxby, Chang-Tai Hsieh, Larry Katz, Alan Krueger, Phillip Levine, Diane Macunovich, and Jane Waldfogel for many valuable conversations and suggestions, and to seminar participants at Columbia, Princeton, Dartmouth, and the NBER Summer Institute for helpful comments received. We are extremely grateful to Roland Fryer and Steven Levitt who provided us access to their confidential California birth data through their excellent research assistant Michael Roh. We also want to thank Anne Case for allowing us to use her state data, and Phillip Levine for providing us with abortion data from the CDC. We thank Alice Roberta Weimers for research assistance. ** Department of Economics and SIPA, Columbia University, 420 W. 118 Street, Room 1022, New York NY 10027; [email protected]. *** Department of Economics and Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, 320 Wallace Hall, Princeton NJ 08544; [email protected]. THE TIMING OF BIRTHS: IS THE QUALITY OF INFANTS COUNTERCYCLICAL?
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