It's a Long Walk: Lasting Effects of Maternity Ward Openings on Labor Market Performance
利用差分法分析产科病房开放对新生儿长期经济影响，发现该改革提高了医院分娩率、降低了新生儿死亡率，并对成年后的劳动收入、失业、残疾和受教育年限产生显著正面效应，且小型产科病房的社会回报率更高。
Abstract 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 labor income, unemployment, health-related disability, and schooling. Small-scale local maternity wards yield a larger social rate of return than large-scale hospitals.