TY  - JOUR
AU  - Black,Sandra E.
AU  - Devereux,Paul J.
AU  - Salvanes,Kjell
TI  - From the Cradle to the Labor Market?  The Effect of Birth Weight on Adult Outcomes
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11796
PY  - 2005
Y2  - November 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11796
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11796.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Sandra Black
Department of Economics
University of Texas
Austin, TX  78712
Tel: 512-475-8519
E-Mail: sblack@austin.utexas.edu

Paul J. Devereux
School of Economics
and Geary Institute
University College Dublin
Belfield, Dublin 4
Ireland
E-Mail: devereux@ucd.ie

Kjell Salvanes
Department of Economics
Norwegian School of Economics
Hellev. 30, N-5035 Bergen
Norway
E-Mail: kjell.salvanes@nhh.no
AB  - Lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes, both short-run in terms of one-year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings. However, recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other hard-to-measure characteristics. By applying within twin techniques using a unique dataset from Norway, we examine both short-run and long-run outcomes for the same cohorts. We find that birth weight does matter; very small short-run fixed effect estimates can be misleading because longer-run effects on outcomes such as height, IQ, earnings, and education are significant and similar in magnitude to OLS estimates. Our estimates suggest that eliminating birth weight differences between socio-economic groups would have sizeable effects on the later outcomes of children from poorer families.
ER  -