The Costs of Low Birth Weight

This file is part of IDEAS, which uses RePEc data

The Costs of Low Birth Weight

Author Info

Douglas Almond
Kenneth Y. Chay
David S. Lee

Abstract

Low birth weight (LBW) infants experience severe health and developmental difficulties that can impose large costs on society. However, estimates of the return to LBW-prevention from cross-sectional associations may be biased by omitted variables, such as genetic factors. To address this, we compare the hospital costs, health at birth, and infant mortality rates between heavier and lighter infants from all twin pairs born in the United States. We also examine the effect of maternal smoking during pregnancy-the leading risk factor for LBW in the United States-on health among singleton births after controlling for detailed background characteristics. Both analyses imply substantially smaller effects of LBW per se than previously thought, suggesting two possibilities: 1) existing estimates overstate the true costs and consequences of LBW by at least a factor of four and by as much as a factor of twenty; or 2) different LBW-preventing interventions have different health and cost consequences, implying that policy efforts that presume a single return to reducing LBW will be suboptimal. © 2005 MIT Press

Download Info
To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

Publisher Info
Article provided by MIT Press in its journal The Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Volume (Year): 120 (2005)
Issue (Month): 3 (August)
Pages: 1031-1083
Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML, plain text, BibTeX, RIS (EndNote), ReDIF
Handle: RePEc:tpr:qjecon:v:120:y:2005:i:3:p:1031-1083

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals/

Order Information:
Web: http://mitpress.mit.edu/journal-home.tcl?issn=00335533

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Christopher F. Baum).

Related research
Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Did you know? All the bibliographic data shown here has been contributed by volunteers, thereby helping to keep this service free.

This page was last updated on 2008-12-17.

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Department of Economics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Connecticut using RePEc data on a server sponsored by the Society for Economic Dynamics.