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The Effects of Prenatal Care Utilization on Maternal Health and Health Behaviors
Author(s) -
Yan Ji
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.3380
Subject(s) - prenatal care , underweight , medicine , breastfeeding , childbirth , pregnancy , health care , obstetrics , environmental health , pediatrics , body mass index , overweight , population , pathology , biology , economics , genetics , economic growth
Summary While many economic studies have explored the role of prenatal care in infant health production, the literature is sporadic on the effects of prenatal care on the mother. This research contributes to this understudied but important area using a unique large dataset of sibling newborns delivered by 0.17 million mothers. We apply within‐mother estimators to find robust evidence that poor prenatal care utilization due to late onset of care, low frequency of care visits, or combinations of the two significantly increases the risks of maternal insufficient gestational weight gain, prenatal smoking, premature rupture of membranes, precipitous labor, no breastfeeding, postnatal underweight, and postpartum smoking. The magnitude of the estimates relative to the respective sample means of the outcome variables ranges from 3% to 33%. The results highlight the importance of receiving timely and sufficient prenatal care in improving maternal health and health behaviors during pregnancy as well as after childbirth. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.