Impacts of Child Development Accounts on maternal depressive symptoms: Evidence from a randomized statewide policy experiment

Jin Huang, Michael Sherraden and Jason Q. Purnell

Social Science & Medicine, 2014, vol. 112, issue C, 30-38

Abstract: This study examines the impact of Child Development Accounts (CDAs)—asset-building accounts created for children at birth—on the depressive symptoms of mothers in a statewide randomized experiment conducted in the United States. The experiment identified the primary caregivers of children born in Oklahoma during 2007, and 2704 of the caregivers completed a baseline interview before random assignment to the treatment (n = 1358) or the control group (n = 1346). To treatment participants, the experiment offered CDAs built on the existing Oklahoma 529 College Savings Plan. The baseline and follow-up surveys measured the participants' depressive symptoms with a shortened version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). In models that control for baseline CES-D scores, the mean follow-up score of treatment mothers is .17 lower than that of control mothers (p < .05). Findings suggest that CDAs have a greater impact among subsamples that reported lower income or lower education. Although designed as an economic intervention for children, CDAs may improve parents' psychological well-being. Findings also suggest that CDAs' impacts on maternal depressive symptoms may be partially mediated through children's social–emotional development.

Keywords: Asset building; Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D); Child Development Accounts; Economic intervention; Maternal depressive symptoms; Saving; Social–emotional development; United States (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:112:y:2014:i:c:p:30-38

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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.04.023

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