Legal abortion has recently been suggested as an essential healthcare service. In this study, we consider whether abortion legalization over 1969-1973 improved women's health, measured by maternal mortality. Our event-study results indicate that legal abortion substantially lowered non-white...

Over the last few decades, health care services in the United States have become more geographically centralized. We study how the loss of hospital-based obstetric units in over 400 counties affect maternal and infant health via a difference-in-differences design. We find that closures lead...

This document states the hypothesis that there are some cultural factors that are negatively related to health care utilization. Evidence of maternal health care is used to assess the hypothesis. Two different dependent variables are used, antenatal care and delivery assistance with a health...

Early term birth is defined as birth at 37 or 38 weeks gestation. While infants born early term are not considered premature, the medical literature suggests that they have an increased risk of serious adverse health outcomes compared to infants born at term (39 or 40 weeks). Despite these known...

We use temperature variation within narrowly-defined geographic and demographic cells to show that prenatal exposure to extreme heat increases the risk of maternal hospitalization during pregnancy, and that this effect is larger for black than for white mothers. At childbirth, heat-exposed...

The maternity benefit scheme introduced as Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY) in 2011 and renamed Pradhan Mantri Matriva Sahyog Yojana (PMMVY) in 2017, which incentivizes pregnant and lactating women to participate in various infant health-promoting activities, is India's largest...

This document states the hypothesis that there are some cultural factors that are negatively related to health care utilization. Evidence of maternal health care is used to assess the hypothesis. Two different dependent variables are used, antenatal care and delivery assistance with a health...

The maternity benefit scheme introduced as Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY) in 2011 and renamed Pradhan Mantri Matriva Sahyog Yojana (PMMVY) in 2017, which incentivizes pregnant and lactating women to participate in various infant health-promoting activities, is India's largest...

The empirical evidence on the inter-generational effects of maternal health interventions is inconclusive, particularly the impact on cognitive ability of children. In this paper, we study one such popular policy from India, viz, the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) which is a agship health and safe...

We use temperature variation within narrowly-defined geographic and demographic cells to show that prenatal exposure to extreme heat increases the risk of maternal hospitalization during pregnancy, and that this effect is larger for black than for white mothers. At childbirth, heat-exposed...