@article{ref1,
title="Economic impact of maternal death on households in rural China: a prospective cohort study",
journal="PLoS one",
year="2013",
author="Huntington, Dale and Wang, Yanfu and Ye, Fang and Wang, Haijun",
volume="8",
number="10",
pages="e76624-e76624",
abstract="OBJECTIVE: To assess the economic impact of maternal death on rural Chinese households during the year after maternal death. METHODS: A prospective cohort study matched 183 households who had suffered a maternal death to 346 households that experienced childbirth without maternal death in rural areas of three provinces in China. Surveys were conducted at baseline (1-3 months after maternal death or childbirth) and one year after baseline using the quantitative questionnaire. We investigated household income, expenditure, accumulated debts, and self-reported household economic status. Difference-in-Difference (DID), linear regression, and logistic regression analyses were used to compare the economic status between households with and without maternal death. FINDINGS: The households with maternal death had a higher risk of self-reported &quot;household economy became worse&quot; during the follow-up period (adjusted OR = 6.04, p<0.001). During the follow-up period, at the household level, DID estimator of income and expenditure showed that households with maternal death had a significant relative reduction of US$ 869 and US$ 650, compared to those households that experienced childbirth with no adverse event (p<0.001). Converted to proportions of change, an average of 32.0% reduction of annual income and 24.9% reduction of annual expenditure were observed in households with a maternal death. The mean increase of accumulated debts in households with a maternal death was 3.2 times as high as that in households without maternal death (p = 0.024). Expenditure pattern of households with maternal death changed, with lower consumption on food (p = 0.037), clothes and commodity (p = 0.003), traffic and communication (p = 0.022) and higher consumption on cigarette or alcohol (p = 0.014). CONCLUSION: Compared with childbirth, maternal death had adverse impact on household economy, including higher risk of self-reported &quot;household economy became worse&quot;, decreased income and expenditure, increased debts and changed expenditure pattern.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1932-6203",
doi="10.1371/journal.pone.0076624",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0076624"
}