Over the past two decades, a growing body of literature within health economics has provided evidence of the impact of fetal conditions on individual’s health and economic outcomes over the entire life course. This dissertation contributes to the field of health economics by investigating the effects of two distinct types of public policies, antimalarial interventions in sub-Saharan Africa and medical marijuana laws in the United States, on early-life health. Chapter 1 adds to the increased understanding of the impact of in utero exposure to large-scale interventions to combat endemic diseases by examining the effects of antimalarial interventions aimed at preventing and controlling malaria in pregnancy on birth outcomes. Since the year 2000, a coordinated international effort against malaria has led to a significant scale-up of intervention coverage across sub-Saharan Africa. One of the objectives of this undertaking was to improve maternal and early-life health. This chapter investigates the effect of access to malaria prevention and control measures, including insecticide-treated nets, intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy, indoor residual spraying, and artemisinin-based combination therapy, on birth weight. I exploit the geographic and time variation in the rollout of antimalarial interventions in sub-Saharan Africa across regions with different levels of initial malaria prevalence to analyze 277,245 live births in 22 countries from 2000 to 2013 in a continuous difference-in-differences estimation framework and find that the diffusion of intermittent preventive treatment among pregnant women contributed to the reduction of low birth weight incidence in sub-Saharan Africa. I do not find other antimalarial interventions to be associated with significant improvements in birth outcomes. Chapter 2 provides an investigation focused on examining the impact of medical marijuana laws in the United States on birth outcomes. As of June 2017, medical marijuana laws which liberalize the cultivation, possession, and use of cannabis for allowable medical purposes have been adopted by 29 states and the District of Columbia. The expansion of state-level legislation allowing for medical marijuana use has fueled an ongoing debate regarding drug policy. Despite a growing interest in investigating and quantifying both direct and indirect effects of marijuana liberalization policies, little is known about how they affect early-life health. Using data on the entire universe of births in the U.S. between 1990 and 2013 and a difference-in-differences research design, I find no evidence to support the hypothesis that medical marijuana laws have a negative impact on birth weight and gestation, however I also find that medical marijuana laws are associated with reductions in Apgar scores.

Yes / Early life is associated with high vulnerability to morbidity and mortality - risks which can be reduced in infancy and early childhood through strategically high levels of parental or alloparental investment, particularly in the case of maternal breastfeeding. Recent evidence has supported links between early-life health and care patterns and long-term population health. This growing body of research regarding the broader impacts of infant-parent interactions transcends a traditional partitioning of research into discrete life stages. It also highlights implications of childhood data for our understanding of population health and behaviour. Skeletal and environmental data indicate that the 5-7th century cemeteries at Littleport and Edix Hill (Barrington A), Cambridgeshire represent populations of similar material culture but contrasting environments and health. The high prevalence of skeletal stress markers at Littleport indicates a community coping with unusual levels of biological stress, potentially a consequence of endemic malaria present in the marshy Fen environs. In contrast, Edix Hill was an inland site which exhibited lower skeletal stress marker prevalence comparable to wider British data for the early medieval period. Early life patterns relating to diet and physiological stress at Littleport (n=5) and Edix Hill (n=8) were investigated through analyses of carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes from incrementally-sampled deciduous dentine. Meaningful variation in isotopic values within and between populations was observed, and should be a focus of future interdisciplinary archaeological childhood studies. / The Society for the Study of Human Biology, the Durham University Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and by the Rosemary Cramp Fund.