Our Jacobs Center professor Ana Costa-Ramón collaborated on a paper that examined this question and was recently published in the Journal of Human Resources. The study followed the health of more than 1.4 million Finnish children from birth to their teenage years. Findings revealed that physicians performed more unplanned C-sections during their regular working hours on days that precede a weekend or public holiday. The authors then used this variation to study the effects of C-sections. The results suggest that avoidable unplanned C-sections increase the risk of asthma, but do not affect other immune-mediated disorders previously associated with C-sections.
Abstract (with link to full article)
