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Money and my mind: Maternal cash transfers and mental health

Edward N Okeke1,2

  • 1Department of Economics, Sociology and Statistics, RAND, Santa Monica, California, USA.

Health Economics
|August 31, 2021
PubMed

This paper documents important mental health spillovers in the context of a program that offered pregnant women modest cash incentives to use pre- and perinatal health care services. Program participation was randomized and the payments were made after the birth of the child (and after the completion of an endline mental health assessment). I present causal evidence that the program led to improvements in mothers' mental health. The effect size ranges from a 1-3 percentage point reduction in postpartum depression measured using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. I present suggestive evidence that these beneficial effects on mental health may be related to program-induced improvements in child health. These results provide novel evidence that programs designed to improve birth outcomes may generate unanticipated spillover effects on mental health.

Keywords:
AfricaRCTconditional incentivesmental health

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