We use 35 years of administrative data to document how newborn health varies with the business cycle in Spain. In panel regressions that include province and year fixed effects as well as province trends, we show that children have significantly better health outcomes at birth in times of high unemployment: a 10 percentage-point increase in the unemployment rate is significantly associated with about 2 log-points higher birth-weight, almost 2 percentage points fewer babies with low birth weight, 0.6 points fewer babies with very low birth-weight, and a 0.4-point drop in mortality rates in the first 24 h We explore several potential mechanisms. First, we show that the documented association is not driven by in-utero selection: we do not find that high unemployment is associated with more miscarriages, abortions, or stillbirths. Second, we explore the role of composition in terms of parental characteristics. We find evidence that unmarried and younger parents, who typically have unhealthier babies, are relatively less likely to have children when unemployment is high. Finally, we show that there are fewer first births during recessions, and birth order is strongly positively correlated with health at birth. Birth order can account for up to one fifth of the countercyclicality of birth weight.

中文翻译：

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新生儿健康和商业周期：出生顺序的作用。

我们使用35年的行政数据来记录新生儿健康随西班牙商业周期的变化。在包括省份和年度固定影响以及省份趋势在内的面板回归中，我们表明，在高失业率时期，儿童出生时的健康状况显着改善：失业率上升10个百分点与大约2 log显着相关。出生体重增加2个百分点，出生体重低的婴儿减少近2个百分点，出生体重非常低的婴儿减少0.6个百分点，头24小时死亡率降低0.4个百分点。我们探索了几种潜在的机制。首先，我们证明了有关联的记录并非由子宫内选择驱动：我们没有发现高失业率与流产，流产或死产的增加有关。第二，我们从父母特征的角度探讨了组成的作用。我们发现有证据表明，在失业率较高的情况下，通常有不健康婴儿的未婚和年轻父母生育子女的可能性相对较小。最后，我们表明，在经济衰退期间，初生人数较少，而且出生顺序与出生时的健康状况密切相关。出生顺序最多可占出生体重反周期的五分之一。