Missing a Nurse Visit

Jonas Cuzulan Hirani, Hans Sievertsen () and Miriam Wüst
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Jonas Cuzulan Hirani: VIVE - The Danish Centre for Applied Social Science

No 13485, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: While a large literature studies the impact of exposure to early-life investment policies, this paper examines the impact of changes within a program, the Danish nurse home visiting program, on child and maternal health. We exploit variation induced by a nurse strike, which resulted in families missing one of the four universally-provided nurse visit. Using variation in children's age at strike start, we show that early, but not later, strike exposure increases child and mother contacts to health professionals in the first four years after birth. Forgoing an early nurse visit also increases the probability of maternal contacts to mental health specialists in the first four years after childbirth. We highlight two potential channels for these results: screening and information provision. We show that in-non strike years- nurses nurses perform well in detecting maternal mental health risks during early visits, and that effects of early strike exposure are strongest for families that we expect to benefit most from information provided by nurses shortly after birth. A stylized calculation confirms that short-run health benefits from early universal home visiting outweigh costs.

Keywords: early-life health; parental investments; nurse home visiting; early interventions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I12 I14 I18 I21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 71 pages
Date: 2020-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
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Published - published online as: 'Beyond Treatment Exposure: The Impact of the Timing of Early Interventions on Child and Maternal Health' in: Journal of Human Resources, May 9, 2022

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Working Paper: Missing a Nurse Visit (2021)
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