This study compares the cost-effectiveness of various health inputs and government programs in reducing race-specific neonatal mortality or death in the first twenty-seven days of life. Approximately two-thirds of all infant deaths occur within this time period. The programs and inputs at issue...

This paper contains the first infant health production functions that simultaneously consider the effects of a variety of inputs on race-specific neonatal mortality rates. These inputs include the use of prenatal care, neonatal intensive care, abortion, Federally subsidized organized family...

This paper makes contributions to the estimation of health production functions and the economics of fertility control. We present the first infant health production functions that simultaneously control for self selection in the resolution of pregnancies as live births or induced abortions and...

This paper contains estimates of the impacts of air pollutants on race-specific neonatal mortality rates based on data for heavily populated counties of the U.S. in 1977. Unlike previous research in this area, these estimates are obtained from awell specified behavioral model of the production...

This paper exploits a natural experiment to estimate the causal impact of parental education on child health in Taiwan. In 1968, the Taiwanese government extended compulsory education from six to nine years. From that year through 1973, the government opened 254 new junior high schools, an 80...

The study examines the impact of the wantedness of a pregnancy on the demand for early prenatal care. Past attempts to address this question have depended on the self-assessments of women as to the wantedness of their pregnancy and birth. Our approach can be described as a form of revealed...

We use a vector autoregression to examine the dynamic relationship between the race-specific percentage of pregnancies terminated by induced abortion and the race-specific percentage of low-birthweight births in New York City. With monthly data beginning in 1972, we find that induced abortion...

Recent analyses suggest that cigarette excise taxes lower prenatal smoking. It is unclear, however, whether the association between taxes and prenatal smoking represents a decline among women of reproductive age or a particular response by pregnant women. We address this question directly with...