EFFECTS OF PARENTAL JOB LOSS AND CHILDREN'S HEALTH: EVIDENCE FROM TAIWAN'S ADMINISTRATIVE DATA

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of parental job loss on a child's birth weight, using unusual data by linking several administrative data sets from Taiwan. Taking advantage of the detailed information on job status and fertility histories in this data, we employ two strategies to capture the causal effect of parental job loss on birth weight: first, we identify parental job loss as involuntary displacement due to plant closures; second, we propose the mother fixed-effects model to control for all time-invariant unobservable family background. Our findings suggest that a mother's job loss has a significantly positive effect on a child's birth weight. However, a father's job loss does not matter. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]