Breastfeeding and Child Developmentt

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fitzsimons, Emla; Vera-Hernandez, Marcos
• 署名单位: University of London; University College London; UCL Institute of Education; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; University of London; University College London
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20180385
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 329-366
• 关键词: polyunsaturated fatty-acids; estimating marginal returns; instrumental variables; cognitive-development; labor-market; family-size; HEALTH; intervention; benefits; LIFE

摘要

We show that children who are born at or just before the week-end are less likely to be breastfed, owing to poorer breastfeeding support services in hospitals at weekends. We use this variation to estimate the effect of breastfeeding on children's development in the first seven years of life, for a sample of births of low-educated mothers. We find large effects of breastfeeding on children's cog-nitive development but no effects on health or noncognitive devel-opment during the period of childhood we consider. Regarding mechanisms, we study how breastfeeding affects parental invest-ments and the quality of the mother-child relationship. (JEL I12, I14, I18, J13, J16, J24)