Child care subsidies play a critical role in facilitating the transition of disadvantaged mothers from welfare to work. However, little is known about the influence of these policies on children's health and well-being. In this paper, we study the impact of subsidy receipt on low-income...

This paper examines the impact of the spatial accessibility of public human services agencies on the likelihood of receiving a child care subsidy among disadvantaged mothers with young children. In particular, we collect data on the location of virtually every human services agency in the U.S....

Studies have estimated the relationship between psychological stress and birth weight by exploiting natural disasters and terrorist attacks, both of which could affect fetal health through other channels. Using data from the National Vital Statistics System for the period 1969-2004, we estimate...

We investigate the association between prepregnancy obesity and birth outcomes using fixed effect models comparing siblings from the same mother. A total of 7,496 births to 3,990 mothers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 survey are examined. Outcomes include macrosomia,...

This study analyzes peer effects on childhood obesity using data from the first two waves of the IDEFICS study, which applies several anthropometric and other measures of fatness to approximately 14,000 children aged two to nine participating in both waves in 16 regions of eight European...

Using five waves from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), we investigate the association between maternal employment and obesity in children aged 3-17 in both rural and urban China. Using BMI and waist circumference as measures for pediatric adiposity, we provide scant evidence for its...

This is the first paper using household survey data from two countries involved in an international war (Eritrea and Ethiopia) to measure the conflict's impact on children's health in both nations. The identification strategy uses event data to exploit exogenous variation in the conflict's...

The increasing prevalence of obesity during pregnancy raises concerns over the intergenerational transmission of obesity and its potential to exacerbate the current obesity epidemic. The fetal origins hypothesis posits that the intrauterine environment might have lasting effects on children's...

Health at birth is an important indicator of human capital development over the life course. This paper uses longitudinal data from the Young Lives survey and employs instrumental variable regression models to estimate the effect of birth weight on cognitive development during childhood in...

The substantial increase in female employment rates in Europe over the past two decades has often been linked in political and public rhetoric to negative effects on child development, including obesity. We analyse this association between maternal employment and childhood obesity using rich...