The Health Impacts of Hospital Delivery Practices

Treatment practices vary widely across hospitals, often with little connection to patients’ medical needs. We assess impacts of these differences in delivery practices at childbirth. We find that infants quasi-randomly delivered at hospitals with higher C-section rates are born in better shape and are less likely to be readmitted, with suggestive evidence of improved survival. These benefits are driven by avoidance of prolonged labors that pose risks to infant health. In contrast, these infants are more likely to visit the emergency department for respiratory-related problems, consistent with a large observational literature linking C-section to chronic reductions in respiratory health. (JEL I11, I12, J13, J16)