This study examines the consequences of parental job displacement for birth outcomes and investigates how the effects vary with regional unemployment rates. We use Swedish register data and exploit plausibly exogenous variation caused by workplace closure to reduce the bias related to reverse causality and confounding. The differences in birth outcomes between children of parents who experienced job displacement and children of parents who were not displaced turn out to be quite modest. Even in the most disadvantaged regions, with the highest unemployment rates, parental job displacement is not harmful for health at birth. We relate these findings to the institutional setting in Sweden and discuss policy implications for the United States.
Authors
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2024.10.1.03
- ISBN
- 2377-8253 2377-8261
- Published in
- United States of America
- Rights
- © 2024 Russell Sage Foundation. Baranowska-Rataj, Anna, Björn Högberg, and Jonas Voßemer. 2024. “Do Consequences of Parental Job Displacement for Infant Health Vary Across Local Economic Contexts?” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 10(1): 57–80. DOI: 10.7758/RSF.2024.10.1.03. We would like to thank the Russell Sage Foundation for supporting this work, and the editors and participants of the workshop organized by the Russell Sage Foundation for their excellent comments and suggestions. This article is part of the project HEALFAM: The Effects of Unemployment on Health of Family Members. This project has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Grant no. 802631). The computer code for these analyses is available at https://osf.io/cpty9/ . Direct correspondence to: Anna Baranowska-Rataj, at anna.baranowska-rataj@umu.se, Center for Demographic and Ageing Research