IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tul/wpaper/1807.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Effect of Waterborne Uranium Exposure on Human Capital Endowment Proxies

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Spanbauer

    (Department of Economics, Tulane University)

Abstract

This paper examines the causal relationship between waterborne uranium exposure and birth outcomes in order to more fully understand the external costs of the activities that increase the probability of human exposure to uranium, such as the prevalent military use of depleted uranium munitions. I use the Church Rock Uranium Mill industrial accident as a natural experiment, in which children born in specific counties are exposed to uranium via a contaminated water supply. I examine changes in birth outcomes, which approximate human capital endowment at birth, and I find that waterborne uranium contamination does not manifest via observable decreases in birth outcomes, specifically birth weight, or via changes in gender ratios. I also provide evidence suggesting that migratory responses to the contamination are not driving a change in the population's determinants of birth outcomes. Collectively, these results support modern militaries' claims that the risk of unintentional harm by uranium based weapons are "negligible".

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Spanbauer, 2018. "Effect of Waterborne Uranium Exposure on Human Capital Endowment Proxies," Working Papers 1807, Tulane University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tul:wpaper:1807
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://repec.tulane.edu/RePEc/pdf/tul1807.pdf
    File Function: First Version, March 2018
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Card, David & Krueger, Alan B, 1994. "Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 772-793, September.
    2. Anne Case & Angus S. Deaton, 2005. "Broken Down by Work and Sex: How Our Health Declines," NBER Chapters, in: Analyses in the Economics of Aging, pages 185-212, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Ashenfelter, Orley C, 1978. "Estimating the Effect of Training Programs on Earnings," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 60(1), pages 47-57, February.
    4. Sandra E. Black & Paul J. Devereux & Kjell G. Salvanes, 2007. "From the Cradle to the Labor Market? The Effect of Birth Weight on Adult Outcomes," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 409-439.
    5. Douglas Almond & Kenneth Y. Chay & David S. Lee, 2005. "The Costs of Low Birth Weight," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 1031-1083.
    6. Ashenfelter, Orley & Card, David, 1985. "Using the Longitudinal Structure of Earnings to Estimate the Effect of Training Programs," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(4), pages 648-660, November.
    7. Douglas Almond & Janet Currie, 2011. "Killing Me Softly: The Fetal Origins Hypothesis," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(3), pages 153-172, Summer.
    8. Jere R. Behrman & Mark R. Rosenzweig, 2004. "Returns to Birthweight," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(2), pages 586-601, May.
    9. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "How Much Should We Trust Differences-In-Differences Estimates?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(1), pages 249-275.
    10. Sarah J. Reber, 2005. "Court Ordered Desegregation: Successes and Failures Integrating American Schools since Brown versus Board of Education," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(3).
    11. Robert Kaestner & Won Chan Lee, 2005. "The effect of welfare reform on prenatal care and birth weight," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(5), pages 497-511, May.
    12. Eli Berman & Jacob N. Shapiro & Joseph H. Felter, 2011. "Can Hearts and Minds Be Bought? The Economics of Counterinsurgency in Iraq," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(4), pages 766-819.
    13. Brugge, D. & DeLemos, J.L. & Bui, C., 2007. "The Sequoyah Corporation fuels release and the Church Rock spill: Unpublicized nuclear releases in American Indian communities," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 97(9), pages 1595-1600.
    14. Ian Ayres & John J. Donohue III, 2002. "Shooting Down the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis," NBER Working Papers 9336, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. repec:ucn:wpaper:10197/317 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Lott, John R, Jr & Mustard, David B, 1997. "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 26(1), pages 1-68, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Jones A.M & Rice N, 2009. "Econometric Evaluation of Health Policies," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 09/09, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    2. Bobonis, Gustavo J. & Stabile, Mark & Tovar, Leonardo, 2020. "Military training exercises, pollution, and their consequences for health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    3. Anca M. Grecu & Lee C. Spector, 2015. "The impact of diabetes insurance mandates on infant health," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 81(4), pages 1040-1061, April.
    4. Gustavo J. Bobonis & Mark Stabile & Leonardo Tovar, 2016. "Bombs and Babies: US Navy Bombing Activity and Infant Health in Vieques, Puerto Rico," NBER Working Papers 22909, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Wookun Kim, 2020. "Baby Bonus, Fertility, and Missing Women," Departmental Working Papers 2011, Southern Methodist University, Department of Economics.
    6. Verónica Amarante & Marco Manacorda & Edward Miguel & Andrea Vigorito, 2016. "Do Cash Transfers Improve Birth Outcomes? Evidence from Matched Vital Statistics, Program, and Social Security Data," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 1-43, May.
    7. Cassandra Robertson & Rourke O’Brien, 2018. "Health Endowment at Birth and Variation in Intergenerational Economic Mobility: Evidence From U.S. County Birth Cohorts," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(1), pages 249-269, February.
    8. Mark E. Mcgovern, 2013. "Still Unequal at Birth: Birth Weight,Socio-economic Status and Outcomes at Age 9," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 44(1), pages 53-84.
    9. Hamid Noghanibehambari & Farzaneh Noghani, 2023. "Long‐run intergenerational health benefits of women empowerment: Evidence from suffrage movements in the US," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(11), pages 2583-2631, November.
    10. Guido W. Imbens & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2009. "Recent Developments in the Econometrics of Program Evaluation," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(1), pages 5-86, March.
    11. Francisco J. Cabrera-Hernández & Pedro P. Orraca-Romano, 2023. "Inequality in the Household: How Parental Income Matters for the Long-Term Treatment of Healthy and Unhealthy Siblings," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 674-692, September.
    12. Lin, Youhong & Liu, Feng, 2020. "Indoor air quality and health: Empirical evidence from fluoride pollution in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    13. Böckerman, Petri & Conlin, Andrew & Svento, Rauli, 2021. "Early health, risk aversion and stock market participation," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(C).
    14. Haeck, Catherine & Lefebvre, Pierre, 2016. "A simple recipe: The effect of a prenatal nutrition program on child health at birth," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 77-89.
    15. Sampaio, Breno, 2010. "On the identification of the effect of prohibiting hand-held cell phone use while driving: Comment," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 44(9), pages 766-770, November.
    16. Marco D. Huesch & Truls Østbye & Michael K. Ong, 2012. "Measuring The Effect Of Policy Interventions At The Population Level: Some Methodological Concerns," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 21(10), pages 1234-1249, October.
    17. Hoyong Jung, 2023. "Can Universal Cash Transfer Save Newborns’ Birth Weight During the Pandemic?," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 42(1), pages 1-22, February.
    18. Noghanibehambari, Hamid, 2022. "Intergenerational health effects of Medicaid," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    19. Kekre, Aishwarya & Mahajan, Kanika, 2023. "Maternity support and child health: Unintended gendered effects," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 880-898.
    20. Andalón, Mabel & Azevedo, João Pedro & Rodríguez-Castelán, Carlos & Sanfelice, Viviane & Valderrama-González, Daniel, 2016. "Weather Shocks and Health at Birth in Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 69-82.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Uranium; birth outcomes; human capital endowment; Church Rock;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • I39 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Other
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:tul:wpaper:1807. 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: Kerui Geng (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/detulus.html .

    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.