The impact of China's universal two-child policy on total, preterm, and multiple births: a nationwide interrupted time-series analysis

Although years have passed since the implementation of China's universal two-child policy, the effectiveness of this policy remains unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we, here, assessed the impact of the two-child policy on total live births, preterm births, and multiple live births. Data...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:BMC public health 2024-01, Vol.24 (1), p.236-236, Article 236
Main Authors: Geng, Yuehang, Zhuo, Lin, Zhang, Rui, Zhao, Houyu, Hou, Xinlin, Chen, Hu, Liu, Lili
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aging
Births
China - epidemiology
China’s two-child policy
Female
Health aspects
Health care
Hospitals
Humans
Infant, Newborn
Infant, Premature
Interrupted time-series analysis
Medical care
Methods
Monitoring systems
Multiple Birth Offspring
Multiple births
Needs assessment
Physiological aspects
Policy
Pregnancy
Premature babies
Premature birth
Premature Birth - epidemiology
Preterm birth
Prevention
Quality management
Risk factors
Time series
Trends
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Summary:Although years have passed since the implementation of China's universal two-child policy, the effectiveness of this policy remains unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we, here, assessed the impact of the two-child policy on total live births, preterm births, and multiple live births. Data identifying pregnancies resulting in at least one live birth between April 1 2013 and December 31 2018 were collected from the Hospital Quality Monitoring System database. Using an interrupted time-series analysis, we estimated immediate level changes and long-term trends in total, preterm (birth before 37 weeks' gestation), and multiple live births that had occurred after July 2016, when the universal two-child policy had taken effect. A total of 8,273,622 live births were reported during the study time frame. The number of live births (p = 0.277), preterm births (p = 0.052), and multiple births (p = 0.856) per month slightly increased immediately after July 2016, but these increases did not meet statistical significance. Further, all three outcomes showed a significant downward trend that lasted until the end of 2018 (p 
ISSN:1471-2458
1471-2458
DOI:10.1186/s12889-023-17620-5