Early Life Health Interventions and Academic Achievement

Prashant Bharadwaj; Katrine Vellesen Løken; Christopher Neilson

doi:10.1257/aer.103.5.1862

American Economic Review Vol. 103 No. 5 2013

Early Life Health Interventions and Academic Achievement

Prashant Bharadwaj¹; Katrine Vellesen Løken²; Christopher Neilson³

¹ University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92629. · ² University of Bergen, Postboks 7802, 5020 Bergen Norway. · ³ Yale University, 37 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, CT 06211.

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Abstract

This paper studies the effect of improved early life health care on mortality and long-run academic achievement in school. We use the idea that medical treatments often follow rules of thumb for assigning care to patients, such as the classification of Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW ), which assigns infants special care at a specific birth weight cutoff. Using detailed administrative data on schooling and birth records from Chile and Norway, we establish that children who receive extra medical care at birth have lower mortality rates and higher test scores and grades in school. These gains are in the order of 0.15–0.22 standard deviations.

DOI: 10.1257/aer.103.5.1862
Volume: 103
Issue: 5
Pages: 1862-1891
Language: en
Sources: bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Early Life Health Interventions and Academic Achievement

Abstract

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