Human Capital, Social Capital and Infant Health: Evidence from New Panel Data

婴儿健康是一个人未来生活成功的关键决定因素。例如，出生体重低的存活婴儿更有可能患有学习障碍和其他认知问题。 此外，平均而言，社会经济地位较低的儿童的出生结果要差得多。由于母亲缺乏机会，婴儿健康受到损害，这是贫穷和不平等代代相传的一种机制。该项目利用1982年至2001年加州的生命统计出生率记录，收集了一组关于婴儿健康的新数据。这个小组允许他们在分娩之间跟踪母亲，以回答关于人力资本，社会资本和婴儿健康决定因素之间关系的三个悬而未决的问题。首先，在美国这样的富裕国家，母亲教育如何影响婴儿健康？ 孕产妇教育对婴儿健康的溢出效应是否可被视为教育的额外回报？母亲教育的估计影响是否因社会经济地位、移民身份或种族/民族而异？为了回答这些问题，该项目比较了母亲在两次生育之间增加教育的兄弟姐妹与母亲没有增加教育的兄弟姐妹的婴儿健康结果。该项目还审查了增加教育改善婴儿健康的渠道。第二，“网络效应”可以解释在使用公共资助的孕产妇保健服务的地理/种族相关性。许多研究人员已经注意到，在使用地理和种族/种族关系定义的网络中，女性的行为之间存在很强的相关性，但很难证明存在因果关系。一组数据使研究人员能够控制许多无法观察到的婴儿健康决定因素，这些因素混淆了以前的非实验研究。此外，该项目测试了流行的假设，估计网络效应反映共享信息。如果网络是通过传递信息来发挥作用，那么估计对以前没有使用过公共孕产妇保健服务的母亲的影响应该更大，因为已经体验过这些服务的母亲知道如何获得这些服务，不需要从网络获得这些信息。小组允许比较网络对以前接受过和没有接受过服务的妇女的估计影响，以便进行这项测试。第三个问题是，医疗补助管理式医疗在加州的实施如何影响了产妇护理服务的获得。该小组的建设使该项目能够询问，例如，是否医疗补助的母亲谁是限制加入医疗补助管理的医疗机构成为不太可能参加医疗补助，使用某些医院，接受服务，并最终有健康的婴儿。该项目评估了低收入母亲获得保健方面的重要变化在多大程度上发挥了作用，缓解或加剧了由于出生时健康状况差异而造成的不平等。

Infant health is a key determinant of an individual's future success in life. For example, surviving infants of low birth weight are more likely to suffer from learning disabilities and other cognitive problems. Moreover, children of lower socioeconomic status have much poorer birth outcomes on average. To the extent that infant health is compromised by the mother's lack of opportunity, it represents a mechanism for the intergenerational perpetuation of poverty and inequality. This project assembles a new panel of data on infant health using California's Vital Statistics Natality Records for 1982 to 2001. This panel allows them to follow mothers between births in order to answer three outstanding questions about the relationships between human capital, social capital, and the determinants of infant health. First, how does maternal education affect infant health in a rich country such as the United States? Can spillovers from maternal education to infant health be considered as an additional return to education? Do estimated effects of maternal education differ with socioeconomic status, immigrant status, or race/ethnicity? In order to answer these questions this project compares the infant health outcomes of siblings whose mothers increased their education between births to those whose mothers did not. The project also examines the channels through which increased education improves infant health. Second, can "network effects" explain geographical/ethnic correlations in the use of publicly funded maternity care services. Many researchers have noted strong correlations between behaviors of women in networks defined using geographical and ethnic/racial affiliations, but it is difficult to prove that there is a causal link. A panel of data allows the researchers to control for many unobservable determinants of infant health which have confounded previous non-experimental studies. Moreover this project tests the prevalent hypothesis that estimated network effects reflect shared information. If networks act by transmitting information, then the estimated effects should be larger among mothers who have not previously used public maternity care services, since mothers who have already experienced the services will know how to access them and do not need to gain this information from networks. The panel permits comparisons of the estimated effects of networks on women who did and did not previously receive the services in order to conduct this test. The third question is how the implementation of Medicaid managed care in California has affected access to maternity care services. The construction of the panel enables the project to ask, for example, whether Medicaid mothers who are constrained to join Medicaid managed care organizations become less likely to enroll in Medicaid, use certain hospitals, to receive services, and ultimately to have healthy infants. This project assesses the extent to which an important change in access to health care for low income mothers has played a role in ameliorating or acerbating inequalities due to differentials in health at birth.