Birth Weight and Developmental Outcomes Among Canadian Children

Previous research using Canadian administrative data has shown that infants born with low birth weight have poorer human capital outcomes when late teenagers and young adults. This paper adds to this literature by examining the effect of birth weight on cognitive and behavioral outcomes using a nationally representative sample of Canadian children under 13. The analysis pools children from the first three cycles of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) and finds that birth weight influences cognitive ability among children under age 7, math scores among school-aged children, and levels of hyperactivity and emotional disorder for children aged 4 to 11. The effects are robust to the inclusion of an extensive set of controls as well as family fixed effects.