In the following chapters, I present research on potential risk factors for adverse birth outcomes and their implications for the socioeconomic status of the newborn in later life. Beyond that, I study the economic consequences for the parents of a newborn child with adverse birth outcomes. Except for the second chapter, all chapters have an applied econometric approach and statistically analyse observational data from Germany and the United Kingdom. The analyses are interdisciplinary and focus on the explanation of them assumptions required to causally interpret the results and address the limitations of the analyses.