Immigration policy and birth weight: positive externalities in Italian law

Pieroni, Luca and Salmasi, Luca (2013): Immigration policy and birth weight: positive externalities in Italian law.

Abstract

A decade ago, the political party of the Italian center-right voted a law restricting immigration. It emphasized severity in granting permits to stay and limited illegal immigration. However, the law became effective in early 2005, when the Italian parliament approved the decree for its application. Only one article of this law, granting amnesty for illegal immigrant workers, was immediately effective, and gave irregular immigrants the opportunity to regularize their status. As a result, 650,000 immigrants were granted the status of foreign nationals in Italy. In this paper, we examine whether the increase in the prevalence of "regular immigrants" has led to an improvement in health outcomes of babies born to migrant women, measured in terms of birth weight. Two hitherto unexploited birth sample surveys published by Italian Institute of Statistics in 2002 and 2005 were used for this study. The surveys, concern interviews with 100,000 mothers who delivered a child between July 2000 and June 2001 in the first survey and in 2003 in the second survey. Our estimates show that regular immigration reduced the probability of low birth weight, indicating that economic benefits in place at birth may be strengthened by increased future productivity.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: birth-weight, immigrants regularization, propensity score matching, difference-in-differences
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I10 - General; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I12 - Health Behavior; I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I1 - Health > I18 - Government Policy ; Regulation ; Public Health

References

Abrevaya, J. & Dahl, C. (2008), ‘The effects of birth inputs on birthweight’, Journal of Business & Economic Statistics 26, 379–397.

Almond, D., K.Y., C. & D.S., L. (2005), ‘The costs of low birth weight’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 120(3), 1031–1083.

Amuedo-Dorantes, C. & Mundra, K. (2005), ‘Impact of Immigration on Prenatal Care Use and Birth Weight: Evidence from California in the 1990’s’, The American Economic Review 93(2), 1177–1205.

Bacci, S., Bartolucci, F. & Pieroni, L. (2012), ‘A causal analysis of mother’s education on birth inequalities’, MPRA Paper 38754 .

Bertrand, M., Duflo, E. & Mullainathan, S. (2004), ‘How much should we trust differences-in-differences estimates?’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 119(1), 249–275.

Blundell, R. & Dias, M. C. (2000), ‘Evaluation methods for non-experimental data’, Fiscal Studies 21(4), 427–468.

Bonifazi, C., Heins, F., Strozza, S. & Vitiello, M. (2009), ‘The Italian transition from emigration to immigration country’, IRPPS WPs (24).

Borjas, G. J. (1990), ‘Self-selection and the earnings of immigrants: Reply’, American Economic Review 80(1), 305–08.

Caliendo, M. & Kopeinig, S. (2005), Some practical guidance for the implementation of propensity score matching, IZA Discussion Papers 1588, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).

Carfagna, S., Gabrielli, D., Sorvillo, M. & Strozza, S. (2008), ‘Changes of status of immigrants in italy: results of a record-linkage on administrative sources’, European Population Conference, Barcelona .

Chiavarini, M., Bartolucci, F., Gili, A., Pieroni, L. & Minelli, L. (2012), ‘Effects of individual and social factors on preterm birth and low birth weight: empirical evidence from regional data in Italy’, International Journal of Public Health 57, 261–268.

Donald, S. G. & Lang, K. (2007), ‘Inference with difference-in-differences and other panel data’, The Review of Economics and Statistics 89(2), 221–233.

Geraci, S., Bonciani, M. & Martinelli, B. (2010), La tutela della salute degli immigrati nelle politiche locali, Technical report, ROMA: Inprinting srl.

Heckman, J. (2000), ‘Policies to foster human capital.’, Research in Economics 54(1), 3–56.

Hildebrandt, N. & McKenzie, D. (2005), ‘The effects of migration on child health in Mexico’, ECONOMIA (257-289).

Imbens, G. (2000), ‘The role of the propensity score in estimating dose-response functions’, Biometrika (87), 706–710.

ISTAT (2001), Rilevazione degli iscritti in anagrafe per nascita, Technical report, ROMA: Inprinting srl.

ISTAT (2002), Rilevazione degli iscritti in anagrafe per nascita, Technical report, ROMA: Inprinting srl.

ISTAT (2003), Rilevazione degli iscritti in anagrafe per nascita, Technical report, ROMA: Inprinting srl.

Lechner, M. (2002), ‘Program heterogeneity and propensity score matching: An application to the evaluation of active labor market policies’, The Review of Economics and Statistics 84(2), 205–220.

Moreno-Serra, R. (2008), Health Programme Evaluation by Propensity Score Matching: Accounting for Treatment Intensity and Health Externalities with an Application to Brazil, Technical report.

Urquia, M., Glazier, R., Blondel, B. & et al. (2010), ‘International migration and adverse birth outcomes: role of ethnicity, region of origin and destination’, J Epidemiol Community Health 64, 243251.