Growing together: assessing equity and efficiency in a prenatal health program

Damian Clarke, Gustavo Cortés Méndez () and Diego Vergara Sepúlveda ()
Additional contact information
Gustavo Cortés Méndez: Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH)
Diego Vergara Sepúlveda: Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH)

Journal of Population Economics, 2020, vol. 33, issue 3, No 5, 883-956

Abstract: Abstract We study the acting mechanism of an early-life social safety net program and quantify its impact on child health outcomes at birth. We consider both the equity and efficiency implications of program impacts and provide a metric to compare such programs around the world. In particular, we estimate the impact of participation in Chile Crece Contigo (ChCC), Chile’s flagship early-life health and social welfare program, using a difference-in-differences style model based on variation in program intensity and administrative birth data matched to social benefits usage. We find that this targeted social program had significant effects on birth weight (approximately 10 grams) and other early-life human capital measures. These benefits are largest among the most socially vulnerable groups but shift outcomes toward the middle of the distribution of health at birth. We show that the program is efficient when compared to other successful neonatal health programs around the world and find some evidence to suggest that maternal nutrition components and increased links to the social safety net are important action mechanisms.

Keywords: Public health; Neonatal health; Social security; Efficiency; Early-life investments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H23 H43 H51 I14 O15 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00148-019-00761-6 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jopoec:v:33:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s00148-019-00761-6

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-019-00761-6

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().