Social and economic aspects of childhood health: Evidence from Western-Europe

We study how social and economic conditions relate to the health status of children using a retrospective survey for Western-Europe. We use the state of the business cycle and the level of Gross Domestic Product as indicators of the macroeconomic conditions. In order to differentiate between fetal and childhood effects, we control for macroeconomic conditions after birth separately. To measure household conditions we construct a measure of the social economic status of the household based on the number of rooms per capita in the household, the number of facilities in the house, the occupation of the main bread winner and the number of books in the household. In addition, we study the impact of episodes of hunger and the presence of both parents. Our main findings are that being born during a boom and growing up during a boom are detrimental for childhood health. In addition, the social economic status of the parents is positively associated to the health status of the child, while experiencing hunger, living without the father and growing up with a parent that drinks heavily are all negatively associated with childhood health.