A pregnancy loss encompasses the events of ‘miscarriage’ (loss of a fetus before 20/24 weeks of gestation) and ‘stillbirth’ (loss after 20/24 weeks but before birth). The involuntary pregnancy disruption is a very common – and overlooked – phenomenon whose estimated prevalence ranges between 30 and 70 percent of pregnancies. It is traumatic event for the surviving parent(s) with enhanced risk of conflict and other issues at an already-stressful moment. The ‘scarring effect’ of pregnancy loss might spill over into other domains of individuals’ life and bring about negative consequences on mental health, partnership stability and labour market outcomes. Also, the intensity of the scarring effect might differ depending on the timing of the loss, as later losses may allow for a longer period for attachment and therefore may cause more psychological trauma. Further, the consequences of fetal loss might be more disruptive for low-SES people who have less resources to face psychological hardship.

This project aims at investigating the ‘scarring effects’ of a pregnancy loss on these life-course outcomes: (a) subjective wellbeing (SWB), (b) union dissolution, (c) labour market instability and income.

Exploiting the uniqueness of Understanding Society data, which display fine-grained information on pregnancy histories and manifold domains of the life-course, I track a woman’s reproductive behaviour along with indicators of well-being, partnership status and job market outcomes in the period 2009-2020.

This research will provide innovative evidence at the individual-level on the consequence of pregnancy loss, whose estimated costs for healthcare systems exceed 400 million pounds annually in the UK.

Outputs

Alessandro Di Nallo, Selin Köksal, Job loss during pregnancy and the risk of miscarriage and stillbirth, Human Reproduction, Volume 38, Issue 11, November 2023, Pages 2259–2266, https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/dead183

Alessandro Di Nallo, Women’s physical health around live births and pregnancy losses: a longitudinal study, European Journal of Public Health, 2025;, ckaf013, https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckaf013

Understanding Society blog: Can losing a job mean losing a pregnancy?

Find out more about Alessandro’s work on their profile page.