TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Cellini, Stefano
AU  - Menezes, Livia
AU  - Koppensteiner, Martin Foureaux
        TI  - Maternal Displacements during Pregnancy and the Health of Newborns
        PY  - 2022/Mar/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 15155
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp15155
        AB  - In this paper, we estimate the effect of maternal displacements during pregnancy on birth outcomes by leveraging population-level administrative data from Brazil on formal employment linked to birth records. We find that involuntary job separation of pregnant single mothers leads to a decrease in birth weight (BW) by around 28 grams (-1% ca.) and an increase in the incidence of low BW by 10.5%. In contrast, we find a significant positive effect on the mean BW and a decrease in the incidence of low BW for mothers in a marriage or stable union. We document more pronounced negative effects for single mothers with lower earnings and no effect for mothers in the highest income quartile, suggesting a mitigating role of self-insurance from savings. Exploiting variation from unemployment benefits eligibility, we also provide evidence on the mitigating role of formal unemployment insurance using a Regression Discontinuity design exploiting the cutoff from the unemployment insurance eligibility rule.
        KW  - dismissals
KW  - birth outcomes
KW  - informal insurance
KW  - unemployment insurance
        ER  -