TY  - JOUR
AU  - Walker,MaryBeth
AU  - Tekin,Erdal
AU  - Wallace,Sally
TI  - Teen Smoking and Birth Outcomes
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 13386
PY  - 2007
Y2  - September 2007
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13386
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13386.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
MaryBeth Walker
Department of Economics
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Georgia State University
P.O. Box 3992
Atlanta, GA 30302-3992
E-Mail: mbwalker@gsu.edu

Erdal Tekin
Department of Economics
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Georgia State University
P.O. Box 3992
Atlanta, GA 30302-3992
Tel: 404/413-0163
Fax: 404/413-0145
E-Mail: tekin@gsu.edu

Sally Wallace
Department of Economics
Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Georgia State University
P.O. Box 3992
Atlanta, GA 30302-3992
E-Mail: swallace@gsu.edu
AB  - In the U.S. teen mothers are more likely to give birth to low birth weight babies than non-teen mothers. There is also substantial evidence that smoking is a risk factor correlated with low birth weight. Low birth weight is a costly outcome in both the short and long term for parents, children, and society at large. This paper examines the causal link between teen age smoking behavior and low birth weight. We use a variety of empirical techniques including fixed effects and a matching estimator to identify the impact of smoking on babies of teen and non-teen mothers. We find that both OLS and matching estimator results yield large impacts of smoking on birth weight for teens and adults. However, when we control for unobservables through a fixed effects model, the impact of smoking on birth weight is diminished and there are relatively small differences in the impact of smoking on birth weight between teens and non-teens.
ER  -