Maternal Smoking, Misclassification, and Infant Health

Brachet, Tanguy (2008): Maternal Smoking, Misclassification, and Infant Health.

Abstract

Identifying the causal effect of prenatal maternal smoking on infant health is complicated by unobservable maternal characteristics and behaviors which are plausibly related to both birth outcomes and a mother’s propensity to smoke. Previous studies have addressed the omitted variables problem using instrumental variables (IV) techniques. However, with self-reported data on maternal smoking, misreporting can induce more severe biases in IV estimates than in OLS. This paper proposes an approach based on parametric methods for misclassified binary dependent variables that simultaneously addresses the endogeneity and measurement error problems. The relationship between infant health and maternal smoking is then re-examined using US Birth Records. I find that roughly 30% of smoking mothers are misclassified as non-smokers. As a result, conventional IV estimates deliver implausibly large birth weight losses (upwards of 1,000 grams among African Americans). Accounting for misclassification yields estimates that are considerably smaller in magnitude and more consistent with experimental evidence.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Misclassification, prenatal maternal smoking, birth outcomes
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I12 - Health Behavior; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C3 - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models ; Multiple Variables > C30 - General

References

Abrevaya, J. (2006): Estimating the Effect of Smoking on Birth Outcomes Using a Matched Panel Data Approach, Journal of Applied Econometrics, 21(4), 489-519.

Adda, J., and F. Cornaglia (2006): Taxes, Cigarette Consumption and Smoking Intensity, American Economic Review, 96(4), 1013-1028.

Aigner, D. J. (1973): Regression with a Binary Independent Variable Subject to Errors of Observation, Journal of Econometrics, 1(1), 49-59.

Almond, D., K. Y. Chay, and D. S. Lee (2005): The Costs of Low Birth Weight, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 120(3), 1031-1083.

Ananth, C., D. Savitz, and E. Luther (1996): Maternal Cigarette Smoking as a Risk Factor for Placental Abruption, Placenta Previa, and Uterine Bleeding in Pregnancy, American Journal of Epidemiology, 144, 881-9.

Anderson, H., J. Bland, and J. Peacock (1992): The Effect of Smoking on Fetal Growth, in Effects of Smoking on the Fetus, Neonate, and Child, ed. by P. D., and A. E., pp. 89-105. Oxford University Press Inc, New York, NY.

Atkinson, A. B., J. Gomulka, and N. Stern (1984): Household Expenditure on Tobacco 1970-1980: Evidence from the Family Expenditure Survey. London School of Economics, London.

Bardy, A. H., T. Seppälä, P. Lillsunde, J. M. Kataja, P. Koskela, J. Pikkarainen, and V. K. Hiilesmaa (1993): Objectively Measured Tobacco Exposure During Pregnancy: Neonatal Effects and Relation to Maternal Smoking, British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 100(8), 721-6.

Becker, G. S., M. Grossman, and K. M. Murphy (1994): An Empirical Analysis of Cigarette Addiction, American Economic Review, 84(3), 396-418.

Black, D. A., M. C. Berger, and F. A. Scott (2000): Bounding Parameter Estimates with Nonclassical Measurement Error, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 95(451), 739-48.

Bollinger, C. R. (1996): Bounding Mean Regressions When a Binary Regressor is Mismeasured, Journal of Econometrics, 73(2), 387-99.

Bollinger, C. R., and M. H. David (1997): Modeling Discrete Choice With Response Error: Food Stamp Participation, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 92(439), 827-835.

Bound, J., C. C. Brown, and N. Mathiowetz (2001): Measurement Error in Survey Data, in Handbook of Econometrics, ed. by E. Learner, and J. Heckman, vol. 5, pp. 3705-3843. North Holland Publishing, New York.

Boyd, N., R. Windsor, L. Perkins, and J. Lowe (1998): Quality of Measurement of Smoking Status by Self-Report and Saliva Cotinine Among Pregnant Women, Maternal and Child Health Journal, 2(2), 77-83.

Bradford, W. D. (2003): Pregnancy and the Demand for Cigarettes, American Economic Review, 93(5), 1752-63.

Britton, G., J. Brinthaupt, J. Stehleand, and G. James (2004): Comparison of Self-Reported Smoking and Urinary Cotinine Levels in a Rural Pregnant Population, Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, and Neonatal Nursing, 33(3), 306-11.

Buescher, P., K. Taylor, M. Davis, and J. M. Bowling (1993): The Quality of the New Birth Certificate Data: A Validation Study in North Carolina, American Journal of Public Health, 83(8), 1163-5.

Card, D. (1996): The Effect of Unions on the Structure of Wages: A Longitudinal Analysis, Econometrica, 64(4), 957-79.

Card, D., A. K. Hildreth, and L. D. Shore-Sheppard (2004): The Measurement of Medicaid Coverage in the SIPP: Evidence From a Comparison of Matched Records, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 22(4), 410-420.

Chaloupka, F. J., and K. E. Warner (2000): The Economics of Smoking, in Handbook of Health Economics, ed. by A. Culyer, and J. Newhouse, vol. 1, Part 2, chap. 29, pp. 1539-1627. Elsevier, North Holland.

Chaloupka, F. J., and H. Wechsler (1997): Price, Tobacco Control Policies and Smoking Among Young Adults, Journal of Health Economics, 16(3), 359-373.

Colman, G., M. Grossman, and T. Joyce (2003): The Effect of Cigarette Excise Taxes on Smoking Before, During and After Pregnancy, Journal of Health Economics, 22(6), 1053-72.

Cragg, J. G. (1971): Some Statistical Models for Limited Dependent Variables with Application to the Demand for Durable Goods, Econometrica, 39(5), 829-45.

Cutler, D. M., J. Gruber, R. S. Hartman, M. Landrum, J. Newhouse, and M. B. Rosenthal (2002): The Economic Impacts of the Tobacco Settlement, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 21(1), 1-19.

Elster, J. (1979): Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

England, L. J., J. S. Kendrick, P. M. Gargiullo, S. C. Zahniser, and W. H. Hannon (2001): Measures of Maternal Tobacco Exposure and Infant Birth Weight at Term, American Journal of Epidemiology, 153(10), 954-60.

Evans, W. N., and M. C. Farrelly (1998): The Compensating Behavior of Smokers: Taxes, Tar, and Nicotine, RAND Journal of Economics, 29(3), 578-95.

Evans, W. N., and J. S. Ringel (1999): Can Higher Cigarettes Taxes Improve Birth Outcomes?, Journal of Public Economics, 72, 135-54.

Evans, W. N., J. S. Ringel, and D. Stech (1999): Tobacco Taxes and Public Policy to Discourage Smoking, Tax Policy and the Economy, 13, 1-55.

Farrelly, M., and J. Bray (1998): Response to Increases in Cigarette Prices by Race/Ethnicity, Income, and Age Groups°UUnited States, 1976-1993, Journal of the American Medical Association, 280(23), 1979-80.

Floyd, R., S. Zahniser, E. Gunter, and J. Kendrick (1991): Smoking During Pregnancy: Prevalence, Effects and Intervention Strategies, Birth, 18, 47-53.

Frazis, H., and M. A. Loewenstein (2003): Estimating Linear Regressions with Mismeasured, Possibly Endogenous, Binary Explanatory Variables, Journal of Econometrics, 117(1), 151-178.

Freeman, R. B. (1984): Longitudinal Analyses of the Effects of Trade Unions, Journal of Labor Economics, 2(1), 1-26.

Gruber, J., and B. Köszegi (2001): Is Addiction Rational? Theory and Evidence, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(4), 1261-1303.

Gruber, J., and J. Zinman (2001): Youth Smoking in the United States: Evidence and Implications, in Risky Behavior Among Youth: An Economic Analysis, ed. by J. Gruber, pp. 69-120. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Harris, J. E. (1987): The 1983 Increase in the Federal Cigarette Excise Tax, Tax Policy and the Economy, 1, 87-112.

Hausman, J., J. Abrevaya, and F. Scott-Morton (1998): Misclassification of the Dependent Variable in a Discrete-Response Setting, Journal of Econometrics, 87, 239-69.

Howell, C., F. Congelio, and R. Yatsko (1994): Pricing Practices for Tobacco Products, 1980-94,.Monthly Labor Review, 117(12), 3-16.

Jakubson, G. (1986): Measurement Error in Binary Explanatory Variables in Panel Data Models: Why Do Cross Section and Panel Estimates of the Union Wage Effect Differ?, Princeton University Industrial Relations Section Working Paper No. 209.

Jones, A. M. (1989): A Double-Hurdle Model of Cigarette Consumption, Journal of Applied Econometrics, 4, 23-39.

Kai, L., and D. J. Poirier (2001): An Econometric Analysis of the Birth Process by Racial/Ethnic Groups,. in Bayesian Methods with Applications to Science, Policy, and Official Statistics, Selected Papers from ISBA 2000: The Sixth World Meeting of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis, ed. by E. I. George, pp. 321-30.

Kane, T. J., C. E. Rouse, and D. Staiger (1999): Estimating Returns to Schooling When Schooling is Misreported, NBER Working Paper 7235.

Keeler, T., T.-W. Hu, P. Barnett, and W. Manning (1993): Taxation, Regulation and Addiction: A Demand Function for Cigarettes Based on Time-Series Evidence, Journal of Health Economics, 12(1), 1-18.

Klebanoff, M., R. Levine, J. Clemens, R. DerSimonian, and D.Wilkins (1998): Serum Cotinine Concentration and Self-Reported Smoking During Pregnancy, American Journal of Epidemiology, 148(3), 259-62.

Lambers, D., and K. Clark (1996): The Maternal and Fetal Physiologic E¤ects of Nicotine, Seminars in Perinatology, 20, 115-26.

Lewit, E., and D. Coate (1982): The Potential for Using Excise Taxes to Reduce Smoking, Journal of Health Economics, 1(2), 121-45.

Lien, D. (2001): Measuring the Inputs to Infant Health: Evidence from Natural Experiments, Ph.D. thesis, University of Maryland, College Park.

Lien, D. S., and W. N. Evans (2005): Estimating the Impact of Large Cigarette Tax Hikes: The Case of Maternal Smoking and Infant Birth Weight, Journal of Human Resources, 40(2), 373-92.

Lumley, J., S. Oliver, C. Chamberlain, and L. Oakley (2004): Interventions for Promoting Smoking Cessation During Pregnancy, The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 4(Art. No.: CD001055.pub2. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001055.pub2).

Ness, R., J. Grisso, and N. Hirschinger (1999): Cocaine and Tobacco Use and the Risk of Spontaneous Abortion, New England Journal of Medicine, 340, 333-9.

Neuhaus, J. M. (1999): Bias and Efficiency Loss Due to Misclassified Responses in Binary Regression, Biometrika, 86(4), 843-855.

Newey, W. K. (1984): A Method of Moments Interpretation of Sequential Estimators, Economics Letters, 14, 201-206.

Newey, W. K., and D. McFadden (1994): Large Sample Estimation and Hypothesis Testing, in Handbook of Econometrics, ed. by R. F. Engle, and D. L. McFadden, chap. 36, pp. 2111-2245, Elsevier, North Holland.

Permut, T., and J. Hebel (1989): Simultaneous Equation Estimation in a Clinical Trial of the Effect of Smoking on Birth Weight, Biometrics, 45, 619-22.

Piccinini, K. (2005): State Fiscal Policy: Channels and Consequences, Working Paper.

Piper, J., E. J. Mitchel, M. Snowden, C. Hall, M. Adams, and P. Taylor (1993): Validation of 1989 Tennessee Birth Certificates Using Maternal and Newborn Hospital Records, American Journal of Epidemiology, 137(7), 758-68.

Poterba, J. M., and L. H. Summers (1995): Unemployment Benefits and Labor Market Transitions: A Multinomial Logit Model with Errors in Classification, The Review of Economics and Statistics, LXXVII(2), 207-16.

Reichman, N. E., and E. M. Hade (2001): Validation of Birth Certificate Data: A Study of Women in New Jersey’s HealthStart Program, Annals of Epidemiology, 11(3), 186-93.

Ringel, J. S., and W. N. Evans (2001): Cigarette Taxes and Smoking During Pregnancy, American Journal of Public Health, 91(11), 1851-6.

Roohan, P., R. Josberger, J. Acar, P. Dabir, H. Feder, and P. Gagliano (2003): Validation of Birth Certificate Data in New York State, Journal of Community Health, 28(5), 335-46.

Rosenzweig, M., and T. P. Schultz (1982): The Behavior of Mothers as Inputs to Child Health: The Determinants of Birth Weight, Gestation, and Rate of Fetal Growth, in Economics Aspects of Health, ed. by V. R. Fuchs, Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press.

Rosenzweig, M. R., and T. P. Schultz (1983): Estimating a Household Production Function: Heterogeneity, the Demand for Health Outputs, and Their Effects on Birth Weight, Journal of Political Economy, 91(5), 723-46.

Sexton, M., and J. Hebel (1984): A Clinical Trial of Change in Maternal Smoking and its Effects on Birth Weight, Journal of the American Medical Association, 251, 911-15.

Surgeon General (2001): Women and Smoking: A Report of the Surgeon General Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health, Washington, DC.

Tobacco Institute (1998): The Tax Burden on Tobacco: Historical Compilation, vol. 30. Tobacco Institute, Washington, DC.

Torelli, P. A. (2000): Maternal Smoking and Birth Outcomes: A Nonparametric Approach, Working Paper.

Webb, D., N. Boyd, D. Messina, and R. Windsor (2003): The Discrepancy Between Self-Reported Smoking Status and Urine Continine Levels Among Women Enrolled in Prenatal Care at Four Publicly Funded Clinical Sites, Journal of Public Health Management and Practice, 9(4), 322-5.

Winston, G. (1980): Addiction and Backsliding: A Theory of Compulsive Consumption, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 1(4), 295-324.

Zollinger, T., M. Przybylski, and R. Gamache (2005): Reliability of Indiana Birth Certificate Data Compared to Medical Records, Annals of Epidemiology, 16(1), 1-10.