Resumen

We study the effect of an increase in the hospital choice set on cesarean rates in Chile.  Using data on hospital discharges and births, we exploit a policy change that decreased the cost of delivery in a private hospital for women with public health insurance. The identification strategy relies on the eligibility requirements to access this benefit: eligible women must expect a single child and have a pregnancy of 37 weeks or more. Using these rules, we construct a control group, women expecting multiple children or giving birth at a gestational age of 36 weeks or less, not affected by the policy. Then using a DID identification strategy we estimate the effect on being born on a weekend, gestational age and whether a doctor performs a delivery (proxies for cesarean section), birth weight, and birth height. We find evidence that, after the policy, women in the treatment group are more likely to have a cesarean section and a negative effect on birth weight.