Born at the right time? Childhood health and the business cycle.
We analyze the relationship between the state of the business cycle at birth and childhood health. We use a retrospective survey on self-reported childhood health for ten Western European countries and combine it with historically and internationally comparable data on the Gross Domestic Product. We validate the self-reported data by comparing them to realized illness spells. We find a positive relationship between being born in a recession and childhood health. This relationship is not driven by selection effects due to heightened infant mortality during recessions. Placebo regressions indicate that the observed effect is not spurious.
University of Groningen & NETSPAR, The Netherlands. Electronic address: v.angelini@rug.nl.
Viola
V
Angelini
University of Groningen & NETSPAR, The Netherlands.
Jochen O
JO
Mierau
D002648:Child; D002669:Child Welfare / Q000191:economics* / Q000639:trends*; D057172:Economic Recession / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D059066:Gross Domestic Product / Q000639:trends*; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007226:Infant Mortality / Q000639:trends; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D013997:Time Factors
Business cycle; Childhood health; Retrospective data; Western Europe