Unobservables, Pregnancy Resolutions, and Birthweight Production Functions in New York City

Abstract

This paper makes contributions to the estimation of health production functions and the economics of fertility control. We present the first infant health production functions that simultaneously control for self selection in the resolution of pregnancies as live births or induced abortions and in the use of prenatal medical care services. We also incorporate the decision of a pregnant woman to give birth or obtain an abortion into economic models of fertility control and use information conveyed by this decision to refine estimates of infant health production functions and demand functions for prenatal medical care.