The effect of temporary parental benefit on children’s antibiotics use: Evidence from a natural field experiment

Prudent use of antibiotics is important to delay the spread of resistance. This paper analyses the effect on children’s antibiotics use of a reform of the temporary parental benefit in Sweden. The reform increased the maximum compensation for this benefit. The level of compensation for social security may affect the propensity of a patient or parent to push for a prescription for antibiotics, as a less generous compensation makes it more expensive to be absent from work and since there is widespread overconfidence in the effectiveness of antibiotics. Using municipality level data, we show that the reform resulted in a reduction in children’s antibiotics use by about five per cent. The result is fairly robust to alternative empirical strategies, suggesting that welfare policies can have important indirect effects that should be taken into account.