Maternal depression symptomatology and child well-being outcomes: limited evidence for a causal relationship

Javier Escobal and Sara Benites

Avances de Investigación from Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE)

Abstract: The paper explores whether or not there is evidence for a causal link between maternal depression symptomatology and child wellbeing. Considering three rounds of data from the Peruvian Young Lives (PYL) longitudinal study sample, the paper explores this relationship by using the SRQ-20 instrument, which is typically used as a screening tool for common mental disorders, and by collecting information about mothers’ socioeconomic characteristics and their children’s well-being outcomes. We found a low correlation of SRQ-20 scores across rounds, suggesting that the instrument may be capturing short-term depression or anxiety symptoms rather than chronic mental illness. Furthermore, the SRQ-20 instrument is correlated both with characteristics of the mother and with child well-being indicators, which change over time (nutritional, health, and educational outcomes as well as feelings and attitudes). The study shows that the magnitude of the relationship between the mental health indicator and the child well-being outcomes may be severely biased in a regression that neglects the possible endogeneity of the mental health indicator. Finally, besides maternal age, education, and ethnicity background, socioeconomic shocks are a key determinant of both depression and anxiety symptoms as well as of child well-being outcomes in the first year following birth of the child (PYL round one), where SRQ-20 scores were the highest.

Keywords: Salud mental; Análisis causal; Perú; SRQ-20; Mental health; Causation; Causal analysis; Inference; Peru (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-lam and nep-neu
Note: Avances de Investigación, 23
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.grade.org.pe/wp-content/uploads/ai23.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gad:avance:0023

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Avances de Investigación from Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo (GRADE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().