Beyond Treatment Exposure: The Impact of the Timing of Early Interventions on Child and Maternal Health

This paper studies the impact of the timing of early-life investment policies on child and maternal health. We exploit variation induced by a nurse strike in Denmark, that resulted in a large-scale cancellation of home visits for families with infants. Combining unique nurse records with administrative data, we show that missing the early but not later visits increases subsequent child and mother contacts to health professionals. We show that likely mechanisms for these results include nurses’ focus on timely maternal mental health screening and information provision to new families.