The Challenge of Making Decisions in a Pregnancy Environment

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There is a very clear problem with causality and it's in some ways almost insurmountable. The concern with having too much caffeine in pregnancy is that you might have a miscarriage, okay? So it's most of the issues involved. What about too much caffeine early in the pregnancy? You really don't see any increased risk of miscarriage up to that level. When you start looking at like eight cups of coffee, you see most much of the evidence does suggest that there's an increased risk of miscarriages.

Emily Oster of the University of Chicago and author of Expecting Better talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about her book on pregnancy and the challenges of decision-making under uncertainty. Oster argues that many of the standard behavioral prescriptions for pregnant women are not supported by the medical literature. The conversation centers around the general issue of interpreting medical evidence in a complex world using pregnancy advice as an application. Alcohol, caffeine, cats, gardening and deli-meats and their effect on pregnant women are some of the examples that come up. The conversation closes with a discussion of Oster's work on hepatitis-B and the male-female birth ratio.