IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ehbiol/v15y2014icp13-22.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Breastfeeding and child disability: A comparison of siblings from the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Wehby, George L.

Abstract

Little is known about whether breastfeeding may prevent disabilities throughout childhood. We evaluate the effects of breastfeeding on child disability using data from the National Survey of Family Growth merged to the National Health Interview Survey for a large nationally representative sample of children aged 1–18 years from the U.S. including over 3000 siblings who are discordant on breastfeeding status/duration. We focus on a mother fixed effect model that compares siblings in order to account for family-level unobservable confounders and employ multiple specifications including a dynamic model that accounts for disability status of the prior child. Breastfeeding the child for a longer duration is associated with a lower risk of child disability, by about 0.2 percentage-points per month of breastfeeding. This effect is only observed on the intensive margin among breastfed children, as any breastfeeding has no effect on the extensive margin. We conclude that very short breastfeeding durations are unlikely to have an effect on reducing disability risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Wehby, George L., 2014. "Breastfeeding and child disability: A comparison of siblings from the United States," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 15(C), pages 13-22.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:15:y:2014:i:c:p:13-22
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ehb.2014.05.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1570677X14000513
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ehb.2014.05.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clive R. Belfield & Inas Rashad Kelly, 2012. "The Benefits of Breast Feeding across the Early Years of Childhood," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(3), pages 251-277.
    2. George L. Wehby & Kaitlin Prater & Ann Marie McCarthy & Eduardo E. Castilla & Jeffrey C. Murray, 2011. "The Impact of Maternal Smoking during Pregnancy on Early Child Neurodevelopment," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(2), pages 207-254.
    3. Kidd, Michael P. & Sloane, Peter J. & Ferko, Ivan, 2000. "Disability and the labour market: an analysis of British males," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 961-981, November.
    4. Daniel I. Rees & Joseph J. Sabia, 2009. "The Effect of Breast Feeding on Educational Attainment: Evidence from Sibling Data," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 43-72.
    5. Reilly, Siobhan & Evenhouse, Eirik, 2005. "Improved estimates of the benefits of breastfeeding using sibling comparisons to reduce selection bias," MPRA Paper 13434, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. McGee, Andrew, 2011. "Skills, standards, and disabilities: How youth with learning disabilities fare in high school and beyond," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 109-129, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Iryna Topolyan & Xu Xu, 2019. "Beliefs about the Benefits of Breastfeeding: Formation and Effects on Breastfeeding Intention and Persistence," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 31(2), pages 143-164, July.
    2. Heiland, Frank & Korenman, Sanders & Smith, Rachel A., 2019. "Estimating the educational consequences of teenage childbearing: Identification, heterogeneous effects and the value of biological relationship information," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 15-28.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. George Wehby, 2014. "Breastfeeding and Child Disability: A Comparison of Siblings from the United States," NBER Working Papers 19940, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Resul Cesur & Joseph J. Sabia & Inas Rashad Kelly & Muzhe Yang, 2017. "The effect of breastfeeding on young adult wages: new evidence from the add health," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 25-51, March.
    3. Del Bono, Emilia & Rabe, Birgitta, 2012. "Breastfeeding and child cognitive outcomes: evidence from a hospital-based breastfeeding support policy," ISER Working Paper Series 2012-29, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    4. Borra, Cristina & Iacovou, Maria & Sevilla, Almudena, 2012. "The effect of breastfeeding on children's cognitive and noncognitive development," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 496-515.
    5. Khudri, Md Mohsan & Hussey, Andrew, 2024. "Breastfeeding and Child Development Outcomes across Early Childhood and Adolescence: Doubly Robust Estimation with Machine Learning," IZA Discussion Papers 17080, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. María Fernanda Rosales, 2014. "Impact of Early Life Shocks on Human Capital Formation: El Niño Floods in Ecuador," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 87693, Inter-American Development Bank.
    7. Elisabetta De Cao, 2015. "The Height Production Function from Birth to Age Two," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(3), pages 329-363.
    8. Jason M. Fletcher, 2011. "Long‐term effects of health investments and parental favoritism: the case of breastfeeding," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(11), pages 1349-1361, November.
    9. Franz Westermaier & Brant Morefield & Andrea Mühlenweg, 2013. "Impacts of Parental Health Shocks on Children’s NonCognitive Skills," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201312, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    10. Emla Fitzsimons & Marcos Vera-Hernandez, 2013. "Food for Thought? Breastfeeding and Child Development," IFS Working Papers W13/31, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    11. Okunade, Albert & Osmani, Ahmad Reshad & Ayangbayi, Toluwalope & Okunade, Adeyinka Kevin, 2021. "Children’s Health Capital Investment: Effects of U.S. Infant Breastfeeding on Teenage Obesity," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 9(4), pages 1-15.
    12. Koh, Kanghyock, 2017. "Maternal breastfeeding and children's cognitive development," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 101-108.
    13. Elisabetta De Cao, 2014. "The height production function from birth to maturity," CSAE Working Paper Series 2014-31, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    14. repec:dgr:rugsom:14018-eef is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Masayuki Onda, 2016. "Breastfeeding and Early Childhood Outcomes: Is There a Causal Relationship?," Departmental Working Papers 2016-09, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    16. Rosales-Rueda, Maria, 2018. "The impact of early life shocks on human capital formation: evidence from El Niño floods in Ecuador," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 13-44.
    17. Asadullah, M. Niaz & Xiao, Saizi, 2020. "The changing pattern of wage returns to education in post-reform China," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 137-148.
    18. Sallin, Aurelién, 2021. "Estimating returns to special education: combining machine learning and text analysis to address confounding," Economics Working Paper Series 2109, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    19. Kai Hong & Peter A. Savelyev & Kegon T. K. Tan, 2020. "Understanding the Mechanisms Linking College Education with Longevity," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(3), pages 371-400.
    20. Brenda Gannon, 2005. "A dynamic analysis of disability and labour force participation in Ireland 1995–2000," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(9), pages 925-938, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ehbiol:v:15:y:2014:i:c:p:13-22. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622964 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.