Unemployment rates are increasingly high, layoffs can occur with fewer and fewer problems for employers and all this, seasoned with the economic crisis in which we live, makes more pregnant women out of work. Some researchers have thought it convenient to study what the health of babies may be at this time and have reached a conclusion that might surprise a little, but that has some logic: pregnant women who don't work have healthier babies.
The authors of the study, whose main title is "Is it good to be born in bad times?", Started from the hypothesis that a worsening economic situation can affect the health of pregnant women and, consequently, harm children. They were not misguided at all, but the first consequence seems to be the opposite.
Pregnant women who don't work have more time to take care of themselves
To resolve the issue a bit and shed some light, the main reason that babies have better health at birth is as follows: when pregnant women are unemployed they have more time to dedicate themselves. They can make more homemade meals, have time to exercise, do not suffer from work stress and can go to the doctor to answer questions.
The researchers made use of the data from the Spanish Active Population Survey to calculate the unemployment rate between 1980 and 2010. They then crossed these data with the births of babies according to provinces and years, assessing birth weight, prematurity and Infant mortality
They saw that the differences at the health level were significant, in favor of the children of mothers who did not work. However, the same authors of the study comment in this regard that if the lack of work affects very low income levels, so much that it increases the level of maternal stress and worsens your diet, the results can be very different.
In the words of Libertad González-Luna, author of the study:
In our work we find that, even comparing the children of the same mother, those born in times of economic recession are born healthier than their brothers born in times of bonanza ... When unemployment rises, on average, women of childbearing age They report better physical health, sleep more, drink less alcohol and have a lower body mass index.
More advanced cultures have it worse
As a general rule, more advanced cultures have it worse. The more a society grows, the more work there is, the more the work, development and social and economic momentum prevails, the worse, because the greater the stress of the parents, the worse their diet and, consequently, the worse the health of Babies and older prematurity rates.
A few years ago, at the Hospital del Mar, a hospital in Barcelona where there is a large immigrant population, mostly from Morocco, and given the feeling that they made excessive use of medical services and to know their reality, they made a study . In addition to realizing that it was not real that they used the emergency services more than the native population, they saw that Arab women had more full-term babies who, in general, had better health (less premature and babies with greater birth weight). The reason, the explanation, was that they had a lower level of stress than the Spanish and more homemade customs when it came to feeding.
Interestingly, a very similar study was carried out in Germany when a wave of Spaniards emigrated in search of work. There they realized the same thing: Spanish women in Germany had fewer premature babies and these were healthier and bigger at birth. It was not a matter, again, of ethnicity (the Germans I would say are on average higher than the Spaniards), but again of lifestyles.
All this leads us to the big question: Are we really making progress? Because it seems that the more we advance as a society, the worse health we have citizens.
