Causes and Consequences of Infectious Diseases Among Children

Infectious diseases are highly prevalent among young children, yet their causes and consequences both for children and their parents remain largely unstudied. We use Danish register data to show how diseases spread across day cares and schools, as well as within families and workplaces, and how they affect health outcomes, school grades, and work place productivity. Following Abowd, Kramarz, and Margolis (1999) we employ double fixed effects models to identify highly infectious families and highly infectious day cares and to measure their effects on their families with exposed children. Our preliminary findings suggest that infectious diseases among children have high costs both in terms of health and productivity for parents. Effects are stronger for mothers, adding to the gender gap in the cost of having young children.