Discharge on the day of birth, parental response and health and schooling outcomes

Exploiting the Danish rollout of same-day discharge policies, we find that treated newborns have a higher probability of hospital readmission in the first month after birth and a lower ninth grade GPA. The longer-run effect is driven by mothers who prior to the policy change would have been least likely to experience a same-day discharge. Using administrative and survey data to assess mechanisms, we show that a same-day discharge impacts those parents’ health investments and their children's medium-run health. Our findings point to important negative effects of policies that expand same-day discharge policies to broad populations of mothers and children.