Premium
THE EFFECTS OF EMPLOYMENT WHILE PREGNANT ON HEALTH AT BIRTH
Author(s) -
Baum Charles L.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1093/ei/cbi019
Subject(s) - earnings , pregnancy , economics , demographic economics , medicine , labour economics , obstetrics , genetics , accounting , biology
Today, many pregnant women take a brief period of time off work to give birth. This article explores the effects of pregnancy employment on health at birth. Initial results show that pregnancy employment has beneficial effects. However, these effects often become statistically insignificant when I control for earnings from pregnancy employment and when I examine women employed prior to the pregnancy and siblings in fixed effects models. I conclude that beneficial effects of pregnancy employment are due to increased family income via earnings and to unobserved heterogeneity. There is no evidence that pregnancy employment adversely affects health at birth.(JEL J1 , J2 , J3 )