published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2021, 76, 102426
This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between birth order, health at birth and in childhood, and parental health investment using administrative data from Austria. We find significant birth order effects on health at birth and in primary school. These effects are positive, in that later-born siblings are healthier than the first-born child, and increase with birth order. Consequently, first-born children are more likely to consume medical drugs and to utilize medical services. We also find differences in parental health investment. First-born children are more likely to receive preventive medical care and immunization against measles, mumps, and rubella.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.