Most married women may be accustomed to work outside the home and make their own careers. Well, in an attempt to be a financial support for the family, the health of their children can probably be at stake. Scientists from the North Carolina State University assert that kids of working mothers are significantly more likely to have health problems, such as asthma and accidents, than children of mothers who don’t work.
At the time of the investigation, experts analyzed the health of school-age children who have at least one younger sibling. Kids of working mothers apparently are at a 200 percent heightened risk of having each of three different adverse health events, overnight hospitalizations, asthma episodes and injuries or poisonings. By means of advanced statistical techniques, investigators examined the causal relationship between working mothers and children’s health. Such an approach also considers confounding factors, like how a child’s health affects the mother’s ability to work.
All through the study, authors assayed older children already enrolled in school, between the ages of 7 and 17 years and whose youngest sibling was around kindergarten age. 20 years worth of data covering almost 89,000 children from the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey was scrutinized. Having collected the data between 1985 and 2004, Dr. Melinda Morrill, research assistant professor of economics at NC State and author of the study and colleagues concluded that kids of working women are at an elevated threat of experiencing health problems.
The study is published in the Journal of Health Economics.