This study aimed to identify the causal effect of breastfeeding on postpartum depression (PPD), using data on mothers from a British survey, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. Multivariate linear and logistic regressions were performed to investigate the effects of breastfeeding on mothers’ mental health measured at 8 weeks, 8, 21 and 32 months postpartum. The estimated effect of breastfeeding on PPD differed according to whether women had planned to breastfeed their babies, and by whether they had shown signs of depression during pregnancy. For mothers who were not depressed during pregnancy, the lowest risk of PPD was found among women who had planned to breastfeed, and who had actually breastfed their babies, while the highest risk was found among women who had planned to breastfeed and had not gone on to breastfeed. We conclude that the effect of breastfeeding on maternal depression is extremely heterogeneous, being mediated both by breastfeeding intentions during pregnancy and by mothers’ mental health during pregnancy. Our results underline the importance of providing expert breastfeeding support to women who want to breastfeed; but also, of providing compassionate support for women who had intended to breastfeed, but who find themselves unable to.

The centres participating in the study presented differences in subjective measures of QOL, objective indicators and also in service provision and styles of living.

We take advantage of a unique natural experiment to provide new, credible evidence on the health consequences of scheduling birth early for non-medical reasons.In May 2010, the Spanish government announced that a €2,500 universal "baby bonus" would stop being paid to babies born after December31st, 2010. Using administrative data from birth certificates and hospital records, we find that about 2,000 families shifted their date of birth from January 2011 to December 2010 (outof 9,000 weekly births). The affected babies, born about one week early on average, weighed about 200 grams less at birth, and suffered a sizeable increase in hospitalization rates in the first two months of life, mostly for respiratory disease.

The Effect of Breastfeeding on Children's Cognitive and Noncognitive DevelopmentThis paper uses propensity score matching methods to investigate the relationship between breastfeeding and children's cognitive and noncognitive development. We find that breastfeeding for four weeks is positively and statistically significantly associated with higher cognitive test scores, by around one tenth of a standard deviation. The association between breastfeeding and noncognitive development is weaker, and is restricted to children of less educated mothers. We conclude that interventions which increase breastfeeding rates would improve not only children's health, but also their cognitive skills, and possibly also their noncognitive development. IntroductionThis paper examines the relationship between breastfeeding and children's later cognitive and noncognitive outcomes. This is a topic of considerable importance for policy in the UK: the World HealthOrganization recommends breastfeeding exclusively for six months and alongside solid foods for two years, but in the UK, barely one in three infants is exclusively breastfed during the first four months of life. Given the increasing recognition of the importance of very early interventions in children's development and later outcomes; and given the huge social gradient in breastfeeding rates, with the most privileged mothers currently being many times more likely to breastfeed than the least privileged mothers, breastfeeding may well be a significant route for the intergenerational transmission of human capital. Recent research shows a significant impact of behavioural and psycho-social outcomes on earnings and education (Duncan and Dunifon 1998;Heckman et al. 2006;Mueller and Plug 2006). Differences in children's cognitive development emerge at early ages (Illsey 2002;Feinstein 2003;Cunha et al. 2010), and the importance of timely parental investments (prenatal as well as post-natal) is increasingly recognized as a major factor in fostering child development (Carneiro and Heckman 2003;Del Bono et al. 2008). A fuller understanding of the relationship between breastfeeding and various aspects of child development is therefore crucial for an understanding of the intergenerational transmission of inequality, and for policy-making aimed at reducing inequality.There is a well-established association between breastfeeding and a range of positive health outcomes in children, such as a lower incidence of asthma and middle ear and urinary tract infections (Dyson et al., 2006). A smaller body of research also shows breastfeeding to be related to better gross motor development (Sacker et al., 2006), and improved cognitive ability (Anderson et al., 1999). Other potential effects of breastfeeding, such as cognitive and noncognitive outcomes of the type investigated here, are much less well * This paper has benefited from comments provided by participants at the British Society of Population Studies and at the 5 th conference of Epidemiological Longitudinal Studies in Europe; from ...

The recession that started in the United States in December 2007 has had a significant impact on the Spanish economy through a large increase in the unemployment rate and a long recession which led to tough austerity measures imposed on public finances. Taking advantage of this quasi-natural experiment, we use data from the Spanish Ministry of Health from 1997 to 2014 to provide novel causal evidence on the short-term impact of health care provision on health outcomes. The fact that regional governments have discretionary powers in deciding health care budgets and that austerity measures have not been implemented uniformly across Spain helps isolate the impact of these policy changes on health indicators of the Spanish population. Using Ruhm's (2000) fixed effects model, we find that staff or hospital bed reductions account for a significant increase in mortality rates from cardiovascular disease and external causes, for 25-34 and 65-74 year-old groups, and in the late foetal mortality rate. Mortality rates, however, do not seem to be robustly affected by the 2012 changes in retirees' pharmaceutical co-payments. Contrary to expectations, we find some evidence of reduced mortality rates for cancer and female cancer as a result of the 2012 changes in migrants' access restrictions to the Spanish NHS. Overall, our analyses suggest that short-term impacts of decreases in health care provision on mortality are significant but small. However, impacts prove to be economically and quantitatively significant in the case of fatalities due to external causes, especially accidental deaths.

To contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the globe have adopted social distancing measures. Yet, establishing the causal effect of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) is difficult because they do not occur arbitrarily. We exploit a quasi-random source of variation for identification purposes –namely, regional differences in the placement on the pandemic curve following an unexpected and nationwide lockdown. Our results reveal that regions where the outbreak had just started when the lockdown was implemented had 1.62 fewer daily deaths per 100,000 inhabitants when compared to regions for which the lockdown arrived 10+ days after the pandemic’s outbreak. As a result, a total of 4,642 total deaths (232 deaths/daily) could have been avoided by the end of our period of study –a figure representing 23% of registered deaths in Spain at the time. We rule out differential pre−COVID mortality trends and self-distancing behaviors across the compared regions prior to the swift lockdown, which was also uniformly observed nationwide. In addition, we provide supporting evidence for contagion deceleration as the main mechanism behind the effectiveness of the early adoption of NPIs in lowering the death rate, rather than an increased healthcare capacity.

We take advantage of a new natural experiment to evaluate the health effects of scheduling birth early for non-medical reasons on infant health. In 2010, the cancellation of a generous child benefit in Spain led may families to schedule birth early in order to remain eligible for the subsidy. We document that the affected cohort of children did not suffer any increase in birth complications or medical conditions right at birth, but were significantly more likely to be admitted to hospital during their second and third weeks of life, suggesting potentially persistent negative health effects.

Child care, Multinomial logit, Spain,