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Unemployment levels and birth outcomes in Spain: The protective role of maternal education

Hector Cebolla-Boado
Tatiana Eremenko, UNED, Spain
Leire Salazar, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)
Marta Seiz, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

Perinatal health is one of the best indicators of infant health and a relevant correlate of later life chances. Perinatal health is not evenly distributed in the population – higher maternal socioeconomic resources are associated with superior birth outcomes. Spain is not an exception to this pattern, and socioeconomic gaps have been persistent over the past two decades. In this paper we analyze the influence of the rise in unemployment during the Great Recession starting in 2008 on these gaps in perinatal health. Earlier research found that babies born during recessive periods in Spain displayed relatively better outcomes due to selection into fertility of parents with greater resources (Aparicio et al. 2020). We focus on maternal education as main indicator of socioeconomic resources and analyze its role as potential mitigator of the impact of adverse macroeconomic circumstances. We use register data including the universe of live births in Spain between 2007 and 2019, combined with aggregate data on unemployment at the province level. Findings from multilevel regression models show a heterogeneous influence of increases in unemployment on birth outcomes (low birth weight, normal weight, high birth weight, prematurity), with more educated mothers being more able to avoid adverse birth outcomes.

Keywords: Health and morbidity, Fertility and childbirth, Inequality, Multi-level modeling

See extended abstract.

  Presented in Session P10.