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Title: Welfare and Child Health: The Link Between AFDC Participation and Birth Weight
Resulting in 1 citation.
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Currie, Janet Cole, Nancy |
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Welfare and Child Health: The Link Between AFDC Participation and Birth Weight American Economic Review 83,4 (September 1993): 971-985. Also: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2117589 Cohort(s): Children of the NLSY79, NLSY79 Publisher: American Economic Association Keyword(s): Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC); Armed Forces Qualifications Test (AFQT); Birthweight; Child Health; Children, Well-Being; Fertility; Household Composition; Income; Mothers, Behavior; Pre-natal Care/Exposure; Pre/post Natal Behavior; Pre/post Natal Health Care; Pregnancy and Pregnancy Outcomes; Program Participation/Evaluation; Siblings; Substance Use; Welfare Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher. The stated goal of the Aid for Families with Dependent Children program is to improve the well-being of children in poor families. The program has come under considerable attack in recent years from critics who argue that participation in AFDC is associated with maternal behaviors that are bad for children. We investigate this question using birth weight as a measure of child health. While AFDC mothers are indeed more likely to have children at younger ages, to delay obtaining prenatal care, to smoke, and to drink during pregnancy, we find no support for the view that AFDC participation induces these behaviors. Rather, our results suggest that some women are predisposed both to participate in AFDC and to these behaviors. These women ultimately have babies of lower birth weight. We show that when observable and unobservable characteristics of the mother are controlled for, there is actually a positive association between participation in AFDC and the birth weights of children of white women from poor families. We find no association between birth weight and maternal participation in AFDC among black children. |
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Bibliography Citation
Currie, Janet and Nancy Cole. "Welfare and Child Health: The Link Between AFDC Participation and Birth Weight." American Economic Review 83,4 (September 1993): 971-985.
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