Browsing by Author "Oliynyk, Adar"

Over the past decades, most of the developed countries allocating growing share of the GDP to the health care system. Large part of the spending allocated to the prenatal and neonatal care. One of the contributions of the increased health investment registered as a rapid decrease in infant mortality. This paper is one of the attempts to evaluate the direct impact of the additional medical attention on the mortality rate in Finland. Using the medical birth registry birth in Finland for the cohort of 2005-2014 I evaluate the impact of the additional medical care on the low weight infants. I establish that at-risk newborns, birth weight of less than 1500 gram, on average receive higher medical attention. Then, using the birth weight of 1500 gram as a threshold, I compare the mortality rate of the infants just below and just above this birth weight. Next, I evaluate predictive factors for the survival probability of the infants with a BW close to 1500 gram. I find a striking difference in survival probability of two percentage points. The infants with a lower birth weight have a higher survival probability, which is contradict the common knowledge about increased mortality for infants with a lower birth weight. Further analysis of the risk factors suggests that the neonatal care associated with survival probability and allow to predict the relative risk level for infants with a given set of treatments. The difference in the survival probability calls for the further, more detailed, research in this topic. If the reason for the higher mortality for the heavier infants is indeed the lack of some type of medical attention, perhaps some policy change might be needed.