Police Interventions and Birth Outcomes Open Access

Abstract

Based on existing literature that well establishes the stress of police interventions and the effects of in-utero exposure to stress on birth outcomes, I hypothesize that in utero exposure to local high profile uses of police force will affect infant birth outcomes, particularly in minority populations. Using comprehensive birth data from the National Center for Health Statistics, I perform a difference-in-difference analysis to test this hypothesis. I do not find compelling evidence for a link between the use of force by police and birth outcomes. I present three explanations for the contradiction between my expected and experimental results. The first two explanations revolve around limitations of measures of police violence incidents. Alternatively, I propose that my results may provide evidence for theories of race-related stress that understand this stress as a lifetime chronic factor, as opposed to being tied to individual events.

Table of Contents

1) Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2) Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2.1) Police Violence Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2.2) Birth Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3) Methodology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

4) Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

4.1) Trimester Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4.2) Robustness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

5) Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

6) Appendix: Tables and Figures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Economics
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Health Sciences, Public Health Economics, General
Keyword	Police Hispanic Violence Birth Birth Outcomes African American Minority Police Violence Police Intervention In Utero Exposure Black
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Krzysztof Karbownik, Emory University
Committee Members	Stephen O'Connell, Emory University Michael Kramer, Emory University

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