Severe Tornadoes and Infant Birth Weight in the United States
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10969321 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nicholas D E Mark (0000-0002-7923-1826, University of Wisconsin–Madison, corresponding author), E J Raker (0000-0002-7822-7032, Department of Sociology, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada), Gerard Torrats-Espinosa (0000-0002-6944-2152, Columbia University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 2047-2073 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Demography (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0070-3370 • E-ISSN: 1533-7790 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00703370-12354082 |
| PMID | 41408856 |
| OpenAlex | W4417451439 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 43 |
Increasing evidence links exposure to extreme weather events in utero with adverse health outcomes at birth, including lower birth weight. This research, however, often faces data limitations because natural disasters may be localized, often affecting some neighborhoods but not others, whereas outcome data are often available only at higher geographic levels, such as counties. In this article, we introduce a novel strategy for estimating the effects of geographically bounded disasters when localized outcome data are unavailable. We employ this strategy to estimate the effect of exposure to severe tornadoes on infant birth weight in the United States from 1991 to 2017. We merge county-month data on singleton births with block-group-level monthly data on the paths of severe tornadoes and block-group data on the distribution of the population at risk of a birth. We then estimate difference-in-differences models in which the treatment variable is equal to the percentage of the population at risk of a birth affected by the tornado. This strategy results in an estimand that is both more interpretable and more policy-relevant than estimands from traditional models. Our findings demonstrate that exposure to a tornado during pregnancy reduced birth weight for Black mothers
Birth weight · Live birth · Low birth weight · Natural disaster · Population · Singleton · Tornado · Agricultural risk and resilience · Climate Change and Health Impacts · Disaster Management and Resilience
Weathering the storm
When stress happens matters
Prenatal maternal stress
The association between prenatal stress and infant birth weight and gestational age at birth
The Effect of Minimum Wages on Low-Wage Jobs
Disasters and Perinatal Health
Climate Change and Birth Weight
Intergenerational inequities in exposure to climate extremes
Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Disaster Vulnerability
Two-Way Fixed Effects Estimators with Heterogeneous Treatment Effects
Difference-in-differences with variation in treatment timing
Difference-in-Differences with multiple time periods
Mostly Harmless Econometrics
Measuring the Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Access to a Personal Healthcare Provider
Natural disasters and local demographic change in the United States
Experiences of Hurricane Katrina Evacuees in Houston Shelters
The Intergenerational Impact of Terror
Natural Hazards, Disasters, and Demographic Change
The Effect of Maternal Stress on Birth Outcomes
When Nature Pushes Back
Psychological Stress and the Human Immune System
The Social Consequences of Disasters
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |