Victimisation and Birth Outcomes

We estimate the causal effect of individual criminal victimisation in robbery and theft on birth outcomes using a unique dataset from Brazil combining information on the universe of victims of crime with vital statistics data. We find that victimisation during pregnancy reduces birthweight by about 16 grams - 3 percent of a standard deviation in birthweight - and increases the likelihood of low and extremely low birthweight by about 8.5 and 30 percent, respectively, compared to the baseline. The results are robust to the inclusion of place of residence, maternal and time fixed effects and to the inclusion of a very large array of mother and pregnancy characteristics. We also show that victimisation leads to behavioural adjustments of mothers as we observe a reduction in the number of prenatal visits. Effects are stronger for individuals of lower socio-economic background, indicating that victimisation might contribute to the intergenerational transmission of poverty