TY - JOUR AU - Reichman,Nancy E. AU - Corman,Hope AU - Noonan,Kelly AU - Dave,Dhaval TI - Typically Unobserved Variables (TUVs) and Selection into Prenatal Inputs: Implications for Estimating Infant Health Production Functions JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 12004 PY - 2006 Y2 - February 2006 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12004 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12004.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Nancy Reichman Robert Wood Johnson Medical School University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey 97 Paterson St., Room 435 New Brunswick, NJ 08903 E-Mail: reichmne@umdnj.edu Hope Corman Rider University 2083 Lawrenceville Road Lawrenceville, NJ 08648 Tel: 609/895-5559 Fax: 609/896-5387 E-Mail: corman@rider.edu Kelly Noonan Department of Economics Rider University 2083 Lawrence Road, Room SWG 306 Lawrenceville, NJ 08648 Tel: 609/895-5539 E-Mail: knoonan@rider.edu Dhaval M. Dave Bentley University Department of Economics 175 Forest Street, AAC 195 Waltham, MA 02452-4705 Tel: 212/817-7955 Fax: 212/817-1597 E-Mail: ddave@bentley.edu AB - We examine the extent to which infant health production functions are sensitive to model specification and measurement error. We focus on the importance of typically unobserved but theoretically important variables (TUVs), other non-standard covariates (NSCs), input reporting, and characterization of infant health. The TUVs represent wantedness, taste for risky behavior, and maternal health endowment. The NSCs include father and family structure characteristics. We estimate effects of prenatal drug use, prenatal cigarette smoking, and first trimester prenatal care on birth weight, low birth weight, and a measure of abnormal infant health conditions. We compare estimates using self-reported inputs versus input measures that combine information from medical records and self-reports. We find that TUVs and NSCs are significantly associated with both inputs and outcomes, but that excluding them from infant health production functions does not appreciably affect the input estimates. However, using self-reported inputs leads to overestimated effects of inputs, particularly prenatal care, on outcomes, and using a direct measure of infant health does not always yield input estimates similar to those when using birth weight outcomes. The findings have implications for research, data collection, and public health policy. ER -