Universal Early-Life Health Policies in the Nordic Countries
聚焦北欧国家普遍早期健康政策，综述两类研究证据：政策引入带来的长期健康、教育及劳动力市场收益，以及现代政策调整对母婴健康和父母投资行为的短期影响。
Given mounting evidence on the negative impact of early-life shocks for the wellbeing of people over the life course, a growing economics literature studies whether early-life policies have symmetric positive effects. This paper zooms in on research on this topic from the Nordic countries, where all families have access to a comprehensive set of early-life health programs, including prenatal, maternity, and well-infant care. I describe this Nordic model of universal early-life health policies and discuss the existing evidence on its causal effects from two categories of studies. First, studying the introduction of universal policies, research has documented important short- and long-run benefits for the health, education, and labor market trajectories of treated cohorts. Second, exploiting modern-day changes to policy design, research for now documents short- and medium-run impacts of universal care on primarily maternal and child health as well as parental investment behaviors. I conclude with directions for future research.