Maternal health: does prenatal care make a difference?

Abstract

This research attempts to close an important gap in health economics regarding the efficacy of prenatal care and policies designed to improve access to that care, such as Medicaid. We argue that a key beneficiary-- the mother-- has been left completely out of the analysis. If prenatal care significantly improves the health of the mother, then concluding that prenatal care is 'ineffective' or that the Medicaid expansions are a 'failure' is premature. This paper seeks to rectify the oversight by estimating the impact of prenatal care on maternal health and the associated cost savings. We first set up a joint maternal-infant health production framework that informs our empirical analysis. Using data from the National Maternal and Infant Health Survey, we estimate the effects of prenatal care on several different measures of maternal health such as body weight status and excessive hospitalizations. Our results suggest that receiving timely and adequate prenatal care may increase the probability of maintaining a healthy weight after the birth and, perhaps for blacks, of avoiding a lengthy hospitalization after the delivery. Given the costs to society of obesity and hospitalization, these are benefits worth exploring before making conclusions about the effectiveness of prenatal care-- and Medicaid.

Maternal Health Care Services Access Index and Infant Survival in Nigeria

“…Access to good health care during pregnancy is essential for mothers' health and development of her unborn child (10,31). In some instances, healthy behaviours after delivery and parenting skills are acquired during pregnancy (31).…”

“…In some instances, healthy behaviours after delivery and parenting skills are acquired during pregnancy (31). Accessing formal health system during pregnancy increases the chance of using skilled attendant at birth and this may contribute to good health of a child in the first year of life (10).…”

Evaluation of the impact of the Mother and Infant Health Project in Ukraine

“…Although it is obvious that the determinants of maternal and infant health are closely related, there are very few works where the issue of maternal and infant health is considered jointly (Winikoff, 1988;Conway and Kutinova, 2006). Moreover, most of the economic literature (both theoretical and empirical, likewise in developed and developing countries) focuses on infant health almost completely ignoring the issue of maternal health.…”

Social trust and use of banking services across households in 28 transitional countries

“…In contrast to the 2SLS, a bivariate probit model is an appropriate method for estimating the simultaneous equations model when outcome and impact are binominal variables (Cameron and Trivedi, 2005). After the 2SLS confirmed that our instruments are correlated with social trust, but uncorrelated with the error term in the main regression equation, we estimated the bivariate probit with the same set of instrumental variables as in the 2SLS (Conway and Kutinova, 2006). Table 1 reports summary statistics and the simple correlation between the use of banking service indicators and social trust, along with a broad array of household-level as well as country-specific variables.…”