This paper investigates the impact of the incidence of the Zika virus on birth rates in Brazil. We estimated a difference-in-differences model that explicitly considers the spatial interaction of virus incidence, measuring its impact on the affected municipalities and their neighbours—not directly affected. Our results show that directly affected municipalities experienced a 1.7% decrease in birth rates in 2016 and 2.5% in 2017, while municipalities close to those affected—but not directly affected—showed reductions of 1.2% and 2.1% for the same periods. Moreover, the evidence shows that the effect was not guided by biological effects and was concentrated among younger women.

中文翻译：

---

蚊子、出生率和区域溢出效应：来自巴西寨卡病毒流行的证据

本文调查了寨卡病毒的发病率对巴西出生率的影响。我们估计了一个差异中的差异模型，该模型明确考虑了病毒发病率的空间相互作用，衡量了其对受影响的城市及其邻居的影响，而不是直接受到影响。我们的结果显示，直接受影响的城市在 2016 年和 2017 年的出生率分别下降了 1.7% 和 2.5%，而与受影响地区（但未直接受影响）附近的城市的出生率同期分别下降了 1.2% 和 2.1%。此外，有证据表明，这种影响不受生物学影响的影响，而是集中在年轻女性中。