Firearm violence is a pervasive public health crisis in the United States, with significant numbers of homicides involving firearms, including indiscriminate shootings in public spaces. This paper investigates the largely unexplored consequences of stress induced by these attacks on newborn health. We use two approaches to examine this question. First, we consider the "beltway sniper" attacks of 2002 as a natural experiment, using administrative birth records with maternal residential addresses in Virginia. The beltway sniper attacks, a series of random shootings in the Washington DC metropolitan area, led to significant terror and disruptions in daily life over a three-week period. We compare birth outcomes of children exposed to the attacks in utero due to timing or having a residential address near a shooting location to those who were not exposed. Second, we investigate the impact of in-utero exposure to mass shootings on infant health outcomes using restricted-access U.S. Vital Statistics Natality records from 2006 to 2019 and leveraging variation in the timing of mass shootings in counties where at least one shooting occurred.Our findings reveal that mass shootings impose substantial, previously unconsidered costs on pregnant women and their infants. Exposure to the beltway sniper attacks during pregnancy increased the likelihood of very low birthweight and very premature birth by 25 percent. The analysis based on national data from mass shootings confirms these findings, albeit with smaller effect sizes. These results underscore the need to recognize the broader impact of violence on vulnerable populations when assessing the true costs of firearm violence. Calculations based on our estimates suggest significant economic burdens, with the additional costs of the beltway sniper attacks reaching $15.5 billion in 2023 dollars and mass shootings imposing annual costs of seven billion dollars. These findings suggest that pregnant women and their infants may require additional support in the aftermath of mass gun violence.
Authors
- Acknowledgements and Disclosures
- The authors thank seminar participants at San Diego State University, Indiana University, University of Virginia, University of Kansas, Cornell University, University of Warwick, Royal Holloway, Newcastle University, University of Sussex, University of Edinburgh, and conference and workshop participants at the Southern Economic Association, INSANE, Public Attitudes and Individual Wellbeing Workshop, and the 12th Workshop on the Economics of Risky Behavior. The use of Virginia Vital Statistics Natality data for this project has been reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Virginia Department of Health (Study # 40251). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3386/w31774
- Published in
- United States of America
