Early-Life Access to a Basic Health Care Program and Adult Outcomes in Indonesia

Access to primary care during early-life can have substantial benefits in developing countries. We evaluate the long-run impact of the Village Midwife Program in Indonesia. We utilize the rollout-variation of the program and link individual background and community characteristics in early childhood to adult outcomes in the Indonesian Family Life Survey. Rejecting pre-trends in the data, we find that the presence of a midwife in a community in utero leads to an improvement in overall health, cognition, and income among men, but not for women. Greater receipt of antenatal care and skilled birth-attendance could in part drive our results