Maternal Employment during Pregnancy and Birth Outcomes - Evidence from Danish Siblings Sfi – the Danish National Centre for Social Research Maternal Employment during Pregnancy and Birth Outcomes - Evidence from Danish Siblings

I use Danish survey and administrative data to examine the impact of maternal employment during pregnancy on birth outcomes. As healthier mothers are more likely to work and health shocks to mothers may impact employment and birth outcomes, I combine two strategies: First, I control extensively for time-varying factors that may correlate with employment and birth outcomes, such as pre-pregnancy family income and maternal occupation, pregnancy-related health shocks, maternal sick listing, and health behaviors (smoking and alcohol consumption). Second, ∗SFI-The Danish National Centre for Social Research, Aarhus University RECEIV, [email protected] I thank Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen for data access and advice and comments. I thank 2 anonymous referees, Paul Bingley, Janet Currie, Anna Piil Damm, Tor Eriksson, Christina Gathmann, Nabanita Datta Gupta, Maarten Lindeboom, Petter Lundborg, Laust Mortensen, Maya Rossin-Slater, seminar participants at SFI and Aarhus University for helpful comments. The Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation granted financial support to this project through a grant to the Graduate School for Integration, Production and Welfare. This paper uses data from the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC), which was created by the Danish Epidemiology Science Centre. The cohort was funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. Additional support was obtained from the Pharmacy Foundation, the Egmont Foundation, the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, the Augustinus Foundation, and the Health Foundation.