Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2019

Publication Title

International Journal of Development and Conflict

First Page

19

Last Page

42

Additional Publication URL

http://www.ijdc.org.in/uploads/1/7/5/7/17570463/june2019article2f1.pdf

Abstract

The Egyptian Revolution that ignited in January 2011 resulted in intense violent conflict between protestors and former regime allies. This generated a significant amount of fear and stress among people who lived in proximity to such events. We use this exogenous shock as a natural experiment to test the causal relationship between prenatal stress and birth weight. Governorate-level fatalities resulting from this conflict will be used as an exogenous indicator for prenatal stress. Using fixed effects and difference-in-difference analysis, results show that higher prenatal stress resulting from political conflict during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy has a significant negative impact on child birth weight. This finding is robust to restricting the sample to siblings’ data and using mother fixed effects, suggesting that neither observable nor unobservable characteristics of mothers are driving the results.

Rights

Originally published by International Journal of Development and Conflict under a Creative Commons 3.0 in International Journal of Development and Conflict, 2019, Volume 9, Issue 1. The original file can be found at International Journal of Development and Conflict . Copyright © Ronia Hawash.

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