Volha Lazuka
Visiting research fellow
It’s a long walk: Lasting effects of maternity ward openings on labour market performance
Author
Summary, in English
Being born in a hospital versus having a traditional birth attendant at home represents the most common early life policy change worldwide. By applying a difference-in-differences approach to register-based individual-level data on the total population, this paper explores the long-term economic effects of the opening of new maternity wards as an early life quasi-experiment. It first finds that the reform substantially increased the share of hospital births and reduced early neonatal mortality. It then shows sizable long-term effects on labour income, unemployment, health-related disability and schooling. Small-scale local maternity wards yield a larger social rate of return than large-scale hospitals.
Department/s
- Department of Economic History
Publishing year
2021-09-01
Language
English
Publication/Series
The Review of Economics and Statistics
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
MIT Press
Topic
- Economic History
Status
Inpress
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 0034-6535