As Low Birth Weight Babies Grow, Can 'Good' Parents Buffer this Adverse Factor? A Research Note.

Abstract

This research note combines two national Taiwanese datasets to investigate the relationship between low birth weight (LBW) babies, their family background and their future academic outcomes. We find that LBW is negatively correlated with the probability of such children attending university at the age of 18; however, when both parents are college or senior high school graduates, such negative effects may be partially offset. We also show that discrimination against daughters does occur, but only in those cases where the daughters were LBW babies. Moreover, high parental education (HPE) can only buffer the LBW shock among moderately-LBW children (as compared to very-LBW children) and full term-LBW children (as compared to preterm-LBW children).