Mental health around pregnancy and child development from early childhood to adolescence

Stephanie von Hinke, Nigel Rice and Emma Tominey ()

Labour Economics, 2022, vol. 78, issue C

Abstract: Mental health problems during pregnancy affect around 20% of mothers and may have lasting impacts on children’s health, cognitive and socio-emotional skills, educational attainment, and future labour market outcomes. We identify the causal effect of mothers’ prenatal mental health on a range of child psychological, socio-emotional and cognitive outcomes. Our methodology exploits shocks to mothers’ mental health that are induced by illness of the mother’s friends or relatives, whilst accounting for the non-randomness of exposure to illness. We find that mothers’ mental health problems negatively affect children’s psychological and socio-emotional skills in early childhood, but these fade-out between the ages of 11-13. There is no effect on children’s cognitive outcomes. Hence, our findings suggest that maternal prenatal mental health may have a limited direct effect on children’s future labour market outcomes.

Keywords: Prenatal psychological health; Offspring psychological outcomes; Offspring socio-emotional outcomes; Offspring cognitive outcomes; ALSPAC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I14 J1 J2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Mental Health around Pregnancy and Child Development from Early Childhood to Adolescence (2019)
Working Paper: Mental Health around Pregnancy and Child Development from Early Childhood to Adolescence (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:78:y:2022:i:c:s092753712200135x

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102245

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