• norsk
    • English
  • English 
    • norsk
    • English
  • Login
View Item 
  •   Home
  • Handelshøyskolen BI
  • Articles
  • Scientific articles
  • View Item
  •   Home
  • Handelshøyskolen BI
  • Articles
  • Scientific articles
  • View Item
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

Educated mothers, healthy infants: the impact of a school reform on the birth weight of Norwegian infants 1967-2005

Grytten, Jostein Ivar; Skau, Irene; Sørensen, Rune Jørgen
Journal article, Peer reviewed
Thumbnail
View/Open
LOCKED until 20.01.2017 due to copyright restrictions (179.6Kb)
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2379734
Date
2014
Metadata
Show full item record
Collections
  • Scientific articles [1722]
Original version
Social Science and Medicine, 105(2014):84-92   10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.01.008
Abstract
Birth weight is an important predictor of health and success in later life. Little is known about the effect of mothers’ education on birth weight. A few causal analyses have been done, but they show conflicting results. We estimated the effect of mothers’ education on birth weight by using data on a school reform in Norway. During the period 1960-1972, all municipalities in Norway were required to increase the number of compulsory years of schooling from seven to nine years. We used this education reform to create exogenous variation in the education variable. The education data were combined with large sets of data from the Medical Birth Registry and Statistics Norway. Since municipalities implemented the reform at different times, we have cross-sectional as well as time-series variation in the reform instrument. In the analyses, we controlled for municipality fixed effects, municipality-specific time-trends and mothers’ and infants’ year of birth. Using this procedure we found a fairly large effect of mothers’ education on birth weight. Increasing mothers’ education reduces the likelihood of low birth weight, even in a publically financed health care system. In interpreting these results it is important to keep in mind that we have examined only one channel, which is through birth weight, through which education may explain differences in health. There are other potential channels that should be explored by future research. In particular, it would be of interest to examine whether education has causal effects on the broader determinants of health, such as psychopathology, social capital and networks, and family stress and dysfunction.
Description
This is the accepted and refereed manuscript to the article
Publisher
Elsevier
Journal
Social Science and Medicine

Contact Us | Send Feedback

Privacy policy
DSpace software copyright © 2002-2019  DuraSpace

Service from  Unit
 

 

Browse

ArchiveCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsDocument TypesJournalsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsDocument TypesJournals

My Account

Login

Statistics

View Usage Statistics

Contact Us | Send Feedback

Privacy policy
DSpace software copyright © 2002-2019  DuraSpace

Service from  Unit