Maternal Depression, Women's Empowerment, and Parental Investment: Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Baranov, Victoria; Bhalotra, Sonia; Biroli, Pietro; Maselko, Joanna
• 署名单位: University of Melbourne; University of Essex; University of Zurich; University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.20180511
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 824-859
• 关键词: cognitive-behavioral therapy; PERINATAL DEPRESSION; MENTAL-HEALTH; major depression; Child outcomes; son preference; RURAL PAKISTAN; fetal origins; primary-care; low-income

摘要

We evaluate the medium-term impacts of treating maternal depression on women's mental health, financial empowerment, and parenting decisions. We leverage variation induced by a cluster-randomized controlled trial that provided psychotherapy to 903 prenatally depressed mothers in rural Pakistan. It was one of the world's largest psych-otherapy interventions, and it dramatically reduced postpartum depression. Seven years after psychotherapy concluded, we returned to the study site to find that impacts on women's mental health had persisted, with a 17 percent reduction in depression rates. The intervention also improved women's financial empowerment and increased both time- and money-intensive parental investments by between 0.2 and 0.3 standard deviations.