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

婴儿健康是个人未来人生成功的关键决定因素。例如，低出生体重存活的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生育结果要差得多。在某种程度上，婴儿健康因母亲缺乏机会而受到损害，这是一种代际延续贫困和不平等的机制。该项目使用加州1982年至2001年的生命统计出生记录收集了一组关于婴儿健康的新数据。这个小组允许他们跟踪母亲出生之间的情况，以回答关于人力资本、社会资本和婴儿健康决定因素之间的关系的三个突出问题。首先，在美国这样的富裕国家，母亲教育对婴儿健康有何影响？母体教育对婴儿健康的溢出效应可以被视为对教育的额外回报吗？产妇教育的估计影响是否因社会经济地位、移民身份或种族/民族而不同？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和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”能否解释在使用公共资助的产妇保健服务方面的地域/种族相关性。许多研究人员已经注意到，在使用地理和民族/种族从属关系定义的网络中，女性的行为之间存在很强的相关性，但很难证明其中存在因果联系。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，这些因素让之前的非实验研究感到困惑。此外，该项目还测试了一个流行的假设，即估计的网络效应反映了共享的信息。如果网络的作用是传递信息，那么对以前没有使用过公共产妇保健服务的母亲的估计影响应该更大，因为已经体验过这些服务的母亲将知道如何获得这些服务，不需要从网络获得这一信息。该小组允许比较网络对以前接受和没有接受服务的妇女的估计影响，以便进行这项测试。第三个问题是，加州医疗补助管理保健计划的实施如何影响了获得产妇保健服务的机会。该小组的建设使该项目能够询问，例如，被限制加入医疗补助管理保健组织的医疗补助母亲是否会降低参加医疗补助、使用某些医院、接受服务以及最终生下健康婴儿的可能性。该项目评估低收入母亲在获得保健方面的一项重要变化在多大程度上起到了改善或加剧因出生时健康差异而造成的不平等的作用。

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.