Beyond Birth Weight: The Origins of Human Capital

Gabriella Conti, Mark Hanson, Hazel Inskip, Sarah Crozier, Cyrus Cooper and Keith Godfrey
Additional contact information
Mark Hanson: University of Southampton
Hazel Inskip: MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton
Sarah Crozier: MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton
Cyrus Cooper: MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton
Keith Godfrey: University of Southampton

No 2018-089, Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group

Abstract: Birth weight is the most widely used indicator of neonatal health. It has been consistently shown to relate to a variety of outcomes throughout the life cycle. Lower birth weight babies have worse health and cognition from childhood, lower educational attainment, wages, and longevity. But what's in birth weight? What are the aspects of the prenatal environment that birth weight actually reflect? In this paper we address this fundamental, yet currently unanswered, question, using unique data with fetal ultrasound measurements from two UK sources. We show that birth weight provides a distinctly limited picture of the uterine environment, capturing both positive and negative aspects of fetal health. Other newborn measures are more informative about different dimensions of the prenatal environment and more predictive of child growth and cognitive development, beyond birth weight. Additionally, patterns of fetal growth are predictive of child physical and mental health conditions, beyond health at birth. Our results are robust to correcting for measurement error, and to accounting for child- and mother-specific unobserved heterogeneity. Our analysis rationalizes a common finding in the early origins literature, that prenatal events can influence postnatal development without affecting birth outcomes. It further clarifies the role of birth weight and height as markers of early health, and suggests caution in adopting birth weight as the main target of prenatal interventions.

Keywords: birth weight; fetal development; prenatal investments; developmental origins of health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 J13 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: HI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Conti_ ... ond-birth-weight.pdf First version, November 16, 2018 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Beyond Birthweight: The Origins of Human Capital (2020)
Working Paper: Beyond birth weight: the origins of human capital (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hka:wpaper:2018-089

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jennifer Pachon ().