revised version published as 'Low-risk isn't no-risk: Perinatal treatments and the health of low-income newborns' in: Journal of Health Economics, 2019, 64, 55-67.
We investigate the impact of early-life medical interventions on low-risk newborn health. A policy rule in The Netherlands creates large discontinuities in medical treatments at gestational week 37. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find no health benefits from additional treatments for average newborns. However, there is substantial heterogeneity in returns to treatments with significant health benefits for newborns in the lowest income quartile and no benefits in higher income quartiles. This seems due to increased maternal stress from referral to an obstetrician among higher-income mothers, heterogeneous effects of home births, and potential difficulties in risk screening among low-income women.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.