期刊名称：Discussion Papers / Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration
印刷版ISSN：0804-6824
出版年度：2014
卷号：2014
出版社：Bergen
摘要：While much is now known about the effects of physical health shocks to pregnant women on theoutcomes of the in-utero child, we know little about the effects of psychological stresses. Oneclear form of stress to the mother comes from the death of a parent. We examine the effects ofthe death of the mother’s parent during pregnancy on both the short-run and the long-runoutcomes of the infant. Our primary specification involves using mother fixed effects—comparing the outcomes of two children with the same mother but where a parent of the motherdied during one of the pregnancies—augmented with a control for whether there is a deatharound the time of the pregnancy in order to isolate true causal effects of a bereavement duringpregnancy. We find small negative effects on birth outcomes, and these effects are bigger forboys than for girls. The effects on birth outcomes seems to be driven by deaths due tocardiovascular causes suggesting that sudden deaths are more difficult to deal with. However, wefind no evidence of adverse effects on adult outcomes. The results are robust to alternativespecifications.
