Prenatal health strongly influences future economic success
From EurekAlert! - Breaking News:
While much attention has been paid to how inherited traits such as skin tone or height influence economic success, a groundbreaking new study from the Journal of Political Economy argues that it is a malleable characteristic -- in utero health -- that most strongly indicates how well a child will fare in adulthood.
This study has important implications for public policy, suggesting that programs targeting early-life health have higher returns for reducing racial disparities in socioeconomic outcomes than more traditional investments, including schooling.
This strongly suggests that economic outcomes are malleable in a way not widely recognized and therefore subject to improvement," explains Douglas Almond (Columbia University).
Detecting delayed effects is inherently difficult, and Almond ingeniously utilizes census microdata from three decades -- including not only birth year, but birth quarter -- to analyze the adult economic outcomes of those exposed in utero to the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Almond found that the children of infected mothers were 15 percent less likely to graduate from high school, and sons of infected mothers earned approximately $2,500 less per year than those who did not have fetal influenza exposure.
"This finding, when combined with previous positive findings on the long-term health effects of the prenatal period, helps explain the gradient between adult health and economic outcomes.
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