Fertility and female mental health

Rui Guan, Hua Lei and Yan Zhi

Journal of Asian Economics, 2025, vol. 97, issue C

Abstract: The issue of female mental health has emerged as a global concern. Using CFPS 2010–2020 data, this paper examines changes in female mental health before and after the childbirth. The estimation results show that fertility has a significant negative impact on female mental health, with a particularly pronounced impact observed in the second year following the birth of the first child. However, the negative effect is small and insignificant for male. Mechanism analysis suggests that the deterioration of female mental health can be attributed to less participation in work and reduced sleep hours, while female physical health status is not affected by fertility. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the negative effects of fertility on female mental health are more pronounced in younger women, giving birth to a son, with lower levels of education and from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Keywords: Fertility; Motherhood; Mental health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104900782400157X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:asieco:v:97:y:2025:i:c:s104900782400157x

DOI: 10.1016/j.asieco.2024.101862

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Asian Economics is currently edited by C. Wiemer

More articles in Journal of Asian Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().