Citation

Baranov V, Bhalotra S, Biroli P, Maselko J. Am. Econ. Rev. 2020; 110(3): 824-859.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2020, American Economic Association)

DOI

10.1257/aer.20180511

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

We evaluate the medium-term impacts of treating maternal depression on women's mental health, financial empowerment, and parenting decisions. We leverage variation induced by a cluster-randomized controlled trial that provided psychotherapy to 903 prenatally depressed mothers in rural Pakistan. It was one of the world's largest psychotherapy interventions, and it dramatically reduced postpartum depression. Seven years after psychotherapy concluded, we returned to the study site to find that impacts on women's mental health had persisted, with a 17 percent reduction in depression rates. The intervention also improved women's financial empowerment and increased both time- and money-intensive parental investments by between 0.2 and 0.3 standard deviations.

Language: en

Keywords

Household Saving, Borrowing, Debt, and Wealth, Health Behavior, Economics of Gender; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration; Non-labor Discrimination, Economic Development: Human Resources