An unexpected consequence of crises: birth weight loss

Periods of crisis generate hardship, in particular if people do not have good ways to insure against these kind of shocks. In theory, temporary losses in income should not have much of a permanent impact, but in practices they may. For example, losing a job entails a wage loss in the next job, because one may have lost human capital, firm specific skills or good outside options. And those wage losses are quite persistent.

Carlos Bozzoli and Climent Quintana-Domeque identify a different persistent effect of a crisis by looking at Argentina. They notice that babies born around 2002 have had a birth weight 30 grams lower than usual, a non-trivial difference that corresponds to a difference between the US and Pakistan. Now, birth weight has been identified to be a remarkably good predictor of future outcomes for a population in terms of health, education and income. Thus, the effects of the 2002 crisis could linger in Argentina for decades.