Do Health Interventions Matter in a Decentralized Healthcare System? A Case Study of the Swedish Female Health Intervention on Maternal Health Outcomes

Sammanfattning: This thesis evaluates if a countrywide female-related healthcare intervention in 2015 affected Swedish regions’ maternal health outcomes differently due to a decentralized healthcare system. By exploiting regions’ varying budget dedicated to female-related healthcare before the intervention, the size of the budget increase is estimated. Maternal health outcomes before and after the intervention are compared using two difference-in-differences (DiD) strategies. A majority of the results indicate that the intervention did not translate into health improvements. Due to low statistical power, longer time-periods are needed in order to further explore impacts of health interventions in a decentralized healthcare system.