A new study finds bigger babies fare better in school.
The study by Northwestern University's Institute for Policy Research utilizes the student data collected in Florida, which tests students from third through 10th grade every year and provides a treasure trove of longitudinal data. (That's why so many education studies draw on Florida.)
Researchers tracked 1.3 million children born in single births and nearly 15,000 pairs of twins. The study followed them from birth through middle school in an effort to discern the link between a child's birth weight and cognitive development.
The study suggests birth weight affects cognitive development in childhood across almost many variables. Children with higher birth weights have an academic edge that remains in effect through at least middle school.
The cognitive advantage exists for children no matter their race and ethnicity or their circumstances -- educated or uneducated parents, young or old moms, single or married parents.
You can read the working paper of the study here.
The New York Times has a lengthy piece on the findings and the implications for the medical profession and current childbirth practices.
Here is a short excerpt.
Seven-pound babies appear to be healthier than six-pound babies — and to fare better in school as they age. The same goes for eight-pound babies compared with seven-pound babies, and nine-pound babies compared with eight-pound babies. Weight, of course, may partly be an indicator of broader fetal health, but it seems to be a meaningful one: The chunkier the baby, the better it does on average, all the way up to almost 10 pounds.
“Birth weight matters, and it matters for everyone,” says David N. Figlio, a Northwestern University professor and co-author of the study, which will soon be published in the American Economic Review, one of the field’s top journals. Mr. Figlio — 5 pounds, 15 ounces at birth — is quick to add that birth weight is not destiny. Its effects are considerably smaller than those of social class, for example. A lighter baby of well-educated parents is likely to do much better in life than a heavier baby of high-school dropouts.
Yet within every group the researchers studied, birth weight appeared to have a noticeable effect, even after controlling for a long list of other factors. Mr. Figlio estimates that, all else equal, a 10-pound baby will score an average of 80 points higher on the 1,600-point SAT than a six-pound baby. Another way to see the pattern is to look only at top-scoring students: Among the top 5 percent of test scorers in elementary school, one in three weighed at least eight pounds at birth, compared with only one in four of all babies.
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