PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Sevim, Dilek
AU  - Baranov, Victoria
AU  - Bhalotra, Sonia
AU  - Maselko, Joanna
AU  - Biroli, Pietro
TI  - Trajectories of Early Childhood Skill Development and Maternal Mental Health
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.1222-12693R3
DP  - 2023 Nov 07
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 1222-12693R3
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2023/11/01/jhr.1222-12693R3.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/early/2023/11/01/jhr.1222-12693R3.full
AB  - We investigate the impacts of a perinatal psychosocial intervention on trajectories of maternal mental health and child skills, from birth to age 3. We find improved maternal mental health and functioning (0.17 to 0.29 SD), modest but imprecisely estimated improvements in parenting (0.07 to 0.11 SD), and transitory improvements in child socioemotional development (0.06 to 0.39 SD). The intervention had negligible influence on physical health and cognition. Estimates of a skill production function reveal the intervention attenuated the negative association between maternal depression and child outcomes, and narrowed outcome gaps between mothers who were and were not depressed in pregnancy.