Family Ruptures, Stress, and the Mental Health of the Next Generation

Petra Persson and Maya Rossin-Slater

No 22229, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper studies how in utero exposure to maternal stress from family ruptures affects later mental health. We find that prenatal exposure to the death of a maternal relative increases take-up of ADHD medications during childhood and anti-anxiety and depression medications in adulthood. Further, family ruptures during pregnancy depress birth outcomes and raise the risk of perinatal complications necessitating hospitalization. Our results suggest large welfare gains from preventing fetal stress from family ruptures and possibly from economically induced stressors such as unemployment. They further suggest that greater stress exposure among the poor may partially explain the intergenerational persistence of poverty.

JEL-codes: I10 I31 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-lab
Note: CH EH LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Published as Petra Persson & Maya Rossin-Slater, 2018. "Family Ruptures, Stress, and the Mental Health of the Next Generation," American Economic Review, vol 108(4-5), pages 1214-1252.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22229.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Family Ruptures, Stress, and the Mental Health of the Next Generation (2018)
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:nbr:nberwo:22229

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22229

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().