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Volha Lazuka

Visiting research fellow

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It’s a long walk: Lasting effects of maternity ward openings on labour market performance

Author

  • Volha Lazuka

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
  • Centre for Economic Demography

Publishing year

2023-11

Language

English

Pages

1411-1425

Publication/Series

The Review of Economics and Statistics

Volume

105

Issue

6

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

MIT Press

Topic

  • Economic History

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0034-6535