Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/207471 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 12646
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We examine the impact of a major earthquake that unexpectedly affected the Canterbury region of New Zealand on a wide-range of birth outcomes, including birth weight, gestational age and an indicator of general newborn health. We control for observed and unobserved differences between pregnant women in the area affected by the earthquake and other pregnant women by including mother fixed effects in all of our regression models. We extend the previous literature by comparing the impact of the initial unexpected earthquake to the impacts of thousands of aftershocks that occurred in the same region over the 18 months following the initial earthquake. We find that exposure to these earthquakes reduced gestational age, increased the likelihood of having a late birth and negatively affected newborn health - with the largest effects for earthquakes that occurred in the first and third trimesters of pregnancy. Our estimates are similar when we focus on just the impact of the initial earthquake or, in contrast, on all earthquakes controlling for endogenous location decisions using an instrumental variables approach. This suggests that the previous estimates in the literature that use this approach are likely unbiased and that treatment effects are homogenous in the population. We present supporting evidence that the likely channel for these adverse effects is maternal stress.
Subjects: 
maternal stress
pregnancy
earthquakes
birth weight
Apgar score
JEL: 
I12
J13
I31
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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