Trends in socioeconomic inequalities in the health of newborns in the Czech Republic between 1990 and 2007
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| Year of publication | 2010 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | This article explores the impact of post-socialist transformation of the Czech society upon the health of newborns from different socioeconomic groups. We use six different measures of child health (various constructs based on birth weight, length of gestation, and vitality) as dependent variables and mothers educational attainment as the key predictor. We use birth certificate data about all singleton births in 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2007 (N=912,764). We estimate random-intercept multi-level models and report observed trends in health inequality by maternal education. We consistently and persistently observe large gaps in health between children born to mothers with elementary education on the one hand and all other children on the other hand. While trends are not entirely congruent across all measures of child health, we find more evidence of growing inequality than of declining or stable inequality. Inequality grew mostly in the 1990s and then stabilized or even declined. We offer two tentative explanations for observed growth in inequality: selective adjustment hypothesis and selective childlessness hypothesis. We have no clear explanation for declining inequality in preterm delivery. |
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