Impact of social transfers on depressive symptoms: Evidence from the South African Old age Pension

Adeola Oyenubi () and Joseph Ajefu ()
Additional contact information
Adeola Oyenubi: University of the Witwatersrand
Joseph Ajefu: Northumbria University
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Nicola Viegi

No 89, ERSA Working Paper Series from Economic Research Southern Africa

Abstract: We study the effect of income receipt in form of Old age pension (OAP) on the prevalence of depressive symptoms using the Centre of Epidemiologic Studies Short Depression Scale (CES-D 10). We exploit the exogeneous age eligibility criteria in a regression discontinuity (RD) design to estimate the impact of OAP on depressive symptoms. Using the randomized inference approach, we find a statistically significant evidence that the OAP reduces depressive symptoms among the beneficiaries. We find this effect vary by gender and employment status. Our result also suggests that the impact of OAP tends to increase with depression scores, that is, those with high depression score tend to benefit more. We note that since the CES-D 10 is a screening tool, this result only provides an indication that the expected positive relationship between income and health holds in this context.

Keywords: Mental health; causal inference; old age pension; South Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I14 I15 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in ERSA Working Paper Series, October 2024

Downloads: (external link)
https://ersawps.org/index.php/working-paper-series/article/view/89/66 First version, 2024 (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:rza:ersawp:89

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ERSA Working Paper Series from Economic Research Southern Africa
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maggi Sigg ().