Demography
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Women's health and pregnancy outcomes: do services make a difference?
We use data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey to investigate the impact of a major expansion in access to midwifery services on health and pregnancy outcomes for women of reproductive age. Between 1990 and 1998 Indonesia trained some 50,000 midwives. ⋯ The presence of a village midwife during pregnancy is also associated with increased birthweight. Both results are robust to the inclusion of community-level fixed effects, a strategy that addresses many of the concerns about biases because of nonrandom program placement.