Mind the information gap: fertility rate and use of cesarean delivery and tocolytic hospitalizations in Taiwan

Health Economics Review

Table 5 Multinomial probit estimates of the effects of declining fertility and health information gap on c-section use (Base outcome: vaginal delivery; Treatment group: female physicians and female relatives of physicians; Comparison group: other women; Main explanatory variable: log of lagged ob/gyns per 100 births × Information), 1996-2004^a

	C-section		C-section on maternal request
Variables	Coef.	Robust Std. Err.	Coef.	Robust Std. Err.
Log of lagged ob/gyns per 100 births	0.174***	0.038	0.339***	0.091
Log of lagged ob/gyns per 100 births × Information^b	-0.008	0.134	-0.293***	0.106
Information^b	-0.304	0.164	-0.103*	0.057
Log GFR	-0.291	0.285	-0.681***	0.084
*Patients' characteristics*
Age	0.056***	0.001	0.055***	0.002
Insurable wage (÷10²)	-0.0004***	0.00005	-0.0003***	0.0001
Previous c-section	7.503***	0.025	3.785***	0.038
Fetal distress	4.672***	0.018	---^c	---^c
Dystocia	4.598***	0.027	---^c	---^c
Breech	3.761***^e	0.034	---^c	---^c
Other complications	4.517***	0.019	---^c	---^c
*Hospitals' characteristics*
Private non-profit	-0.538***	0.021	0.195***	0.031
Proprietary	0.150***	0.028	1.175***	0.04
Medical Center	0.156***^e	0.044	0.582***	0.059
Regional Hospital	-0.408***	0.031	0.123**	0.042
District Hospital	-0.158***	0.02	0.470***	0.023
Teaching Hospital	0.132***	0.027	0.081**	0.034
Bed size (÷10²)	-0.028***	0.002	-0.0002	0.002
*Ob/gyn characteristics*
Ob/gyn age	0.006	0.01	0.002	0.013
Ob/gyn gender	0.091	0.067	0.152	0.084
Constant	-9.240**	2.66	-2.51	4.173
Log likelihood	-4,399,462.47

a The regression includes a full set of time and regional dummies and N = 2,241,980.
b Information is a dummy variable and information = 1 indicates medically-informed individuals.
* Statistically significant at the 10% level.
** Statistically significant at the 5% level.
*** Statistically significant at the 1% level.
^c Coefficients and standard errors were not estimated because CDMR by definition does not have medical complications.
g The marginal effect of the interaction term "Log of lagged ob/gyn per 100 births × Information" on the probability of having c-sections: $\begin{gathered} [\begin{gathered} (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.2910312, I = 0)) \\ - (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.6134288, I = 0)) \end{gathered}] - [\begin{gathered} (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.2910312, I = 1)) \\ - (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.6134288, I = 1)) \end{gathered}] \\ = 0.0004363 \end{gathered}$
Standard error for the marginal effect obtained by bootstrapping: 0.0005167
h The marginal effect of the interaction term "Log of lagged ob/gyn per 100 births × Information" on the probability of having CDMR: $\begin{gathered} [\begin{gathered} (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.2910312, I = 0)) \\ - (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.6134288, I = 0)) \end{gathered}] - [\begin{gathered} (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.2910312, I = 1)) \\ - (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.6134288, I = 1)) \end{gathered}] \\ = 0.0001728 \end{gathered}$
Standard error for the marginal effect obtained by bootstrapping: 0.0006485

ISSN: 2191-1991