We study the impact of a Canadian prenatal nutrition program on child health at
birth. The objective of the OLO program is to reduce the incidence of prematurity
and low birth weight by providing a specifi
c food basket and nutritional guidance to
pregnant women in situations of poverty. Our identi
cation strategy exploits exoge-
neous variations in access to the program caused by the progressive implementation
of the program by local community service centers. The administrative birth records
used in this study provide early health outcomes (birth weight and gestational age) for
over 1.5 million newborns, along with a number of family characteristics. Our results
suggest that the program had a positive impact on the birth weight of children and
reduced the incidence of low birth weight, with larger impacts on children of mothers
with a high school degree or less. While the cost of the program is equivalent to the
US comparable WIC program, the food basket is simpler and the gains on birth weight
are larger.
JEL I12,