The Heterogeneous Effect of Prenatal Care on Birth Weight: Evidence from Mexico

Abstract

Prenatal care has long been identified as an effective strategy to reduce the risk of low birth weight among infants; however, most studies ignore endogeneity and distributional effect of prenatal care on birth weight. Using the instrumental variable quantile regression method, we estimate the effect of prenatal care on birth weight at different quantiles of the birth weight distribution. We find that the effect of a prenatal visit on birth weight is heterogeneous across birth weight quantiles. Infants at the lower birthweight quantiles benefit more from prenatal care compared with infants at the higher birthweight quantiles. The marginal effect of prenatal care visit is 52 grams at the 10th quantiles versus 34 grams at the 90th quantiles. Targeted policies aimed at improving access to prenatal care for women at higher risk of giving birth to low birth infants may help improve the birth endowment of infants.