(Press-News.org)
The introduction of a policy protecting parental leave benefits in Sweden in 1980 had unintended consequences on child health. The policy led to an increase in premature birth rates. This is shown by a study from researchers at Stockholm University, published in JAMA Pediatrics.
The Swedish so-called speed premium policy was introduced in 1980 in order to protect couples’ level of income-based parental leave benefits when they had children in quick succession. The new study from Stockholm University evaluates the health consequences of the policy. The researchers conclude that by unintentionally encouraging couples to have children within a shorter 24-month interval, the policy led to a 26% increase in the proportion of children born prematurely over the six years that it was in force.
“The results are convincing as the relaxation of the policy to a 30-month window in 1986 was meanwhile associated with an 11% decrease in premature birth rates in the following years. These changes remain in place today,” says Enrico Debiasi, researcher at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University.
Parental leave benefits in Sweden for most parents consist of approximately 80% of their salary prior to childbirth. However, due to a previous non-salaried leave period or a shift to part-time work, parents who already have a child might receive lower benefits for their next child. This is a situation that is very common for Swedish women after a period of parental leave, according to Debiasi.
In order to reduce the risk of low benefits for parents who had children in quick succession, the speed premium policywas introduced. The policy stipulated that among those with children born up to 24 months apart, parental leave benefits would be calculated according to the income received before the first one of those children was born.
“The policy was well-intentioned and offered important socioeconomic benefits for mothers, as has been shown previously. However, it did not anticipate that parents would shorten birth spacing, which is associated with adverse health consequences for the mother and the child,” says Sol Juárez, Associate Professor at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University.
The policy also encouraged women to postpone having children in order to protect their income, while still achieving their desired number of children, adds Helena Honkaniemi, researcher at the Department of Public Health Sciences, Stockholm University.
“This resulted in a higher proportion of women having multiple children at advanced ages, which is also a risk factor for several adverse reproductive health outcomes,” she says.
Overall, the new study offers an excellent example of the consequences of not considering health when designing family policies, according to Juárez.
The study was published in the scientific journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Facts
The study "Unintended perinatal health consequences associated with a Swedish family policy" is part of the research project "The unintended consequences of Swedish parental leave policy: A health equity perspective" led by Associate Professor Sol Juárez. Its purpose is to contribute much needed knowledge to ongoing debates on parental leave policy reforms by illustrating the ways in which they can also act as health policies, while providing knowledge that can be used to help achieve Sweden’s public health policy goals of social and health equity for all. The project is funded by The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet).
END
IMMUNE KEY TO CHRONIC VIRAL INFECTIONS DISCOVERED
Australian researchers have discovered a previously unknown rogue immune cell that can cause poor antibody responses in chronic viral infections. The finding, published today (9 April) in the journal, Immunity, may lead to earlier intervention and possibly prevention of some types of viral infections such as HIV or hepatitis.
One of the remaining mysteries of the human immune system is why a certain cell, called a B cell, which retains a memory for past infections – ensuring we fight off diseases we have experienced before – often only has a weak capacity to protect us from persistent infections.
Researchers ...
Per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances – commonly known as PFAS – are a group of over 14,000 human-made chemicals that have been popular since the 1950s for their diverse skills in resisting heat, water, grease and stains.
They’ve been commonly found in household products like non-stick frypans, clothing, cosmetics, insecticides, and food packaging, as well as specialty industry products, like firefighting foam.
But despite their broad skillset, the chemicals have a dark side: they’re known as ‘forever chemicals’ as once they’re in the environment – ...
About 4.5 billion years ago, a small planet smashed into the young Earth, flinging molten rock into space. Slowly, the debris coalesced, cooled and solidified, forming our moon. This scenario of how the Earth's moon came to be is the one largely agreed upon by most scientists. But the details of how exactly that happened are "more of a choose-your-own adventure novel," according to researchers in the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory who published a paper in Nature Geoscience. The findings offer important insights into the evolution ...
Using artificial intelligence, satellite observations, and climate model projections, a team of researchers from Switzerland and Belgium calculate that for every tenth of a degree of increase in global air temperature, an average of nearly 9,000 meteorites disappear from the surface of the ice sheet. This loss has major implications, as meteorites are unique samples of extraterrestrial bodies that provide insights into the origin of life on Earth and the formation of the Moon.
Disappearing at an alarming rate
By 2050, about a quarter of the estimated of 300,000 - 800,000 meteorites in Antarctica will be lost ...
Through a large-scale analysis, researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience have uncovered the ways in which consensual touch can benefit a person’s physical and mental wellbeing.
You might recognize the comforting feeling when someone offers you a hug at the end of a stressful day or strokes your shoulder when you’re feeling down. But the question remains: can touch really help you feel better, and does it matter who it’s from or how they touch you? To explore these questions, researchers from the Social Brain Lab at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the University Hospital ...
(BOSTON) — The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Northpond Ventures announced today that the VC firm’s affiliate Northpond Labs has signed an agreement to support the development of the AminoX project toward commercialization. This is the fourth Wyss project selected by Northpond Labs for additional funding.
Established in 2020 with the involvement of Harvard’s Office of Technology Development, the five-year strategic research alliance created The Laboratory for Bioengineering Research and Innovation at the Wyss Institute through a $12 million commitment from Northpond Labs to support impactful research ...
A new automated workflow developed by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has the potential to allow researchers to analyze the products of their reaction experiments in real time, a key capability needed for future automated chemical processes.
The developed workflow – which applies statistical analysis to process data from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy – could help speed the discovery of new pharmaceutical drugs, and accelerate the development of new chemical reactions.
The Berkeley Lab scientists who developed the groundbreaking technique ...
For millions of years, underground fungi have lived in symbiosis with plant roots. Plants provide photosynthesized carbon, while fungi deliver water and nutrients. In order to do so, these organisms share space at cellular scale: fungi stretch a network of tendrils called arbuscules into a plant’s root cells, and both organisms rearrange their cells around this structure to facilitate sharing.
Recently, researchers have been able to study both sides of this interaction up close, using RNA sequencing to understand gene expression: one of the first cross-kingdom spatially-resolved transcriptomics studies to date. This paper ...
Donations for a political candidate can be motivated by support for that candidate or by opposition to the candidate’s opponent. New research published in Social Science Quarterly found that female Democrats and non-white male Democrats in the United States have a fundraising advantage when running against a white male Republican. Female Republicans or non-white male Republicans do not have this advantage when running against white male Democrats.
To assess the impact that race, gender, and party ...
Berlin, Germany – 8 April 2024: The first randomised trial to investigate preventive ablation of a potential arrhythmogenic substrate associated with coronary chronic total occlusion (CTO) in patients at high risk of ventricular arrhythmias (VAs) reduces the risk of appropriate implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) therapy and unplanned hospitalisation in patients with no previously recorded VAs. The late-breaking science is presented at EHRA 2024, a scientific congress of the European ...
