Oreopoulos, Philip, Mark Stabile, Randy Walld, and Leslie L. Roos. 2008. “Short-, Medium-, and Long-Term Consequences of Poor Infant Health: An Analysis Using Siblings and Twins.” Journal of Human Resources 43(1): 88–138.
We use administrative data on a sample of births between 1978 and 1985 to investigate the short-, medium-, and long-term consequences of poor infant health. Our findings offer several advances to the existing literature on the effects of early infant health on subsequent health, education, and labor force attachment. First, we use a large sample of both siblings and twins, second, we use a variety of measures of infant health, and finally, we track children through their schooling years and into the labor force. Our findings suggest that poor infant health predicts both mortality within one year, and mortality up to age 17. We also find that infant health is a strong predictor of educational and labor force outcomes. In particular, infant health is found to predict both high school completion and welfare takeup and length.
Philip Oreopoulos is an associate professor of economics at the University of Toronto. Mark Stabile is an associate professor of business economics and public policy at the University of Toronto. Randy Walld is an information technologist at the University of Manitoba. Leslie Roos is a professor of community health science at the University of Manitoba. The authors gratefully acknowledge those individuals who helped make this research possible. These include the Manitoba Ministry of Education, Citizenship and Youth—John Van Wallenghem, Richard Perrault, Carol Crera, Jean Britton, Ken Clark, and Shirley McLellan; from the Ministry of Family Services and Housing—Harvey Stevens, Grant Doak, Gudrun Fritz, and Jan Forster; and from the Ministry of Health—Louis Barre. Janet Currie and Sandra Black provided very helpful comments. Stabile and Roos thank the Canadian Institutes for Health Research for financial support. Oreopoulos thanks the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (MH:2004/2005–27). Additional support was provided by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the RBC Financial Group (MH:2003/2004-32). The authors also thank Florian Hoffman for excellent research assistance. The data used in this article are housed at the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. Information on access can be obtained by contacting Leslie Roos, Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, 4th Floor, 727 McDermot Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3E 3P5 Canada; e-mail: Leslie_Roos@cpe.umanitoba.ca, beginning from August 2008 through July 2011. All codes to replicate the tables in this paper will be kept on file during this time.