The Labor Market and Health Impacts of Reducing Cesarean Section Deliveries

Sarah Miller, Petra Persson, Maya Rossin-Slater and Laura Wherry

No 34556, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: One in three births in the United States is delivered by cesarean section (c-section). This paper studies the labor market and health effects of c-sections, using newly linked administrative data that combines the universe of California birth records with mothers’ quarterly earnings. We analyze the impact of an intervention that reduced c-section rates among low-risk first-time births, and find that mothers exposed to the intervention appear to have a higher likelihood of employment in the quarter following birth, as well as a higher likelihood of returning to their pre-birth employer. These impacts attenuate over time—suggesting that a c-section primarily delays return to the labor market following childbirth—but attachment to the pre-birth employer remains higher five quarters post-birth. We find no evidence of significant impacts on maternal or infant health, indicating that the intervention-induced decline in c-sections did not come at the cost of worse outcomes. Further, among mothers who have another child, we find that exposure to the intervention at the first birth leads to a lower likelihood of c-section and preterm delivery at the second one, implying that both the economic and health benefits of reduced c-sections may compound with birth order.

JEL-codes: I14 I15 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-12
Note: CH EH
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34556.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

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:nbr:nberwo:34556

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34556
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().