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

Health Economics Review

Table 6 Multinomial probit estimates of the effects of declining fertility and health information gap on c-section use (Base outcome: vaginal delivery; Comparison group: low socioeconomic status women; Treatment group: High socioeconomic status 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	0.789**	0.35	0.591***	0.13
Log of lagged ob/gyns per 100 births × Information^b	0.133	0.291	-0.054	0.39
Information^b	-0.188	0.513	-1.746**	0.655
Log GFR	-0.207	0.231	-0.588**	0.089
*Patients' characteristics*
Age	0.057***	0.001	0.055***	0.002
Insurable wage (÷10²)	-0.0004***	0.00005	-0.0005***	0.0001
Previous c-section	6.750***	0.029	3.322***	0.091
Fetal distress	5.467***	0.035	---^c	---^c
Dystocia	6.528***	0.045	--- ^c	---^c
Breech	3.784***	0.086	---^c	---^c
Other complications	4.529***	0.017	---^c	---^c
*Hospitals' characteristics*
Private non-profit	-0.653***	0.061	0.139**	0.07
Proprietary	0.087	0.074	1.041***	0.094
Medical Center	0.332**	0.119	0.612***	0.137
Regional Hospital	-0.275***	0.075	0.263**	0.099
District Hospital	-0.088**	0.037	0.585***	0.047
Teaching Hospital	0.084	0.065	0.003	0.074
Bed size (÷10²)	-0.030***	0.005	0.003	0.005
*Ob/gyn characteristics*
Ob/gyn age	-0.001	0.005	-0.011*	0.006
Ob/gyn gender	0.003	0.024	0.126***	0.034
Constant	-5.446***	0.19	-5.219***	0.262
Log likelihood	-4,160,195.98

a The regression includes a full set of time and regional dummies and N = 1,815,660
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.
^cCoefficients and standard errors were not estimated because CDMR by definition does not have medical complications.
The marginal effect of the interaction term "Log of lagged ob/gyn per 100 births × Information" on the probability of having c-sections: $\begin{gathered} [\begin{gathered} (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.2910312, I = 0)) \\ - (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.6134288, I = 0)) \end{gathered}] - [\begin{gathered} (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.2910312, I = 1)) \\ - (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.6134288, I = 1)) \end{gathered}] \\ = 0.0003987 \end{gathered}$
Standard error for the marginal effect obtained by bootstrapping: 0.0006423
The marginal effect of the interaction term "Log of lagged ob/gyn per 100 births × Information" on the probability of having CDMR: $\begin{gathered} [\begin{gathered} (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.2910312, I = 0)) \\ - (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.6134288, I = 0)) \end{gathered}] - [\begin{gathered} (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.2910312, I = 1)) \\ - (Pr (L O B B I R T H = - 0.6134288, I = 1)) \end{gathered}] \\ = 0.0002126 \end{gathered}$
Standard error for the marginal effect obtained by bootstrapping: 0.0007081

ISSN: 2191-1991