Is high-tech care in a middle-income country worth it?: Evidence from perinatal centres in Russia
Abstract
© 2016 The Authors Economics of Transition © 2016 The European Bank for Reconstruction
and Development Published by Blackwell Publishing LtdHow much does a dramatic increase
in technology improve healthcare quality in an upper middle-income country? Using
rich vital statistics on infant health outcomes, this study evaluates the effect of
introducing technologically advanced perinatal hospitals in 24 regions of Russia on
infant mortality during the period 2009–2013. A 7-year aggregate panel dataset reveals
that opening a perinatal centre corresponds to infant mortality reduction by 3.8 percent
from the baseline rate, neonatal (0–28 day) mortality by 7 percent and early neonatal
(0–6 day) mortality by 7.3 percent. We find that the perinatal centres help to save
263 additional infant lives annually, ranging from 3 to 25 lives in regions with different
birth rates. However, we further find that an average cost per life saved is 52 million
rb (or 2.6 million 2014 PPP USD), which is much higher than the cost of similar interventions
in the United States.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13159Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1111/ecot.12098Publication Info
Nigmatulina, D; & Becker, CM (2016). Is high-tech care in a middle-income country worth it?: Evidence from perinatal centres
in Russia. Economics of Transition, 24(4). pp. 585-620. 10.1111/ecot.12098. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/13159.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Charles Maxwell Becker
Research Professor of Economics
Charles Becker is interested in exploring the economies of such countries as Kazakhstan,
India, sub-Saharan Africa, Russia, and Kyrgyzstan. His research has focused on economic
demography, social security system forecasting, CGE modeling, mortality and disability
risk, determinants of health care utilization, computable general equilibrium simulation
modeling, and urban economics. His on-going projects involve assessing infant mortality
rates, poverty in developing countries, accidental deaths

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