Data and Code for: Place Effects and Geographic Inequality in Health at Birth

This paper uses birth records and mothers who move to quantify the absolute and relative importance of birth location for early-life health. Using a model that includes mother and location fixed effects, we find that moving from a below- to an above-median birth-weight location leads to important improvements in child birth weight, with comparable magnitudes to policies targeting maternal health. Place effects are larger for longer-distance moves and more influential for children of non-college-educated mothers. We find that pollution is the strongest predictor of early-health place effects.