Beyond Treatment Exposure–The Impact of the Timing of Early Interventions on Child and Maternal Health

This paper studies the impact of the timing of early-life investment policies on child and maternal health. We exploit variation induced by a 2008 Danish nurse strike that resulted in a large-scale cancellation of home visits for families with infants. Combining unique nurse records with administrative data, we show that missing the first but not later visits increases child and mother contacts to health professionals and the probability of maternal mental health issues. We show that likely mechanisms for these results include nurses’ focus on timely maternal mental health screening and information provision to new families. ∗We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Innovation Fund Denmark grant 5155-00001B. Wüst is a member of the Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI), which is financed by the Danish National Research Foundation, Grant DNRF134. The Copenhagen City Archives generously provided the data on nurse home visiting in the municipality of Copenhagen. We thank Boel Leth Emanuel (municipality of Copenhagen) for valuable input on the data. We thank Aline Bütikofer, Casper Worm Hansen, Claus Thustrup Kreiner, Søren Leth Pedersen, Maya Rossin-Slater, Jakob Egholt Søgaard, Emma Tominey, Christine Valente, Stephanie Vincent Lyk-Jensen and seminar participants at briq (Bonn), SOFI (Stockholm), CEBI (University of Copenhagen), Copenhagen Business School, the NBER Children’s Program Meeting 2019, the Danish Ministry of Health, CINCH Essen and at the 2019 EALE conference for helpful comments. †The Danish Center for Social Science Research (VIVE). Herluf Trolles Gade 11, 1052 Copenhagen, email: jjh@vive.dk. ‡Department of Economics, University of Bristol and The Danish Center for Social Science Research (VIVE). Priory Road Complex, Priory Road, Bristol BS8 1TU, UK, email: h.h.sievertsen@bristol.ac.uk. §Corresponding author: University of Copenhagen, Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI), Department of Economics and The Danish Center for Social Science Research (VIVE). Øster Farismagsgade 5, 1353 Copenhagen, email: miriam.w@econ.ku.dk., phone: +45 35321365