Data and Code for: Maternal Depression, Women's Empowerment, and Parental Investment: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Victoria Baranov, University of Melbourne; Sonia Bhalotra, University of Essex; Pietro Biroli, University of Zurich (Switzerland); Joanna Maselko, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Version: View help for Version V1

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maternalDepression-1.2			10/07/2019 02:38:AM

Project Citation:

Baranov, Victoria, Bhalotra, Sonia, Biroli, Pietro, and Maselko, Joanna. Data and Code for: Maternal Depression, Womenâ¿¿s Empowerment, and Parental Investment: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2020. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-02-28. https://doi.org/10.3886/E111366V1

Project Description

Summary: 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 control 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% 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.

Funding Sources: ESRC (ES/L009153/1); Grand Challenges Canada (0072-03)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: mental health; maternal depression; women's labor supply; empowerment; early life; parenting; child development; randomized controlled trial; RCT; Pakistan

JEL Classification:
      I15 Health and Economic Development
      I30 General
      O15 Human Resources • Human Development • Income Distribution • Migration

Geographic Coverage: Pakistan

Time Period(s): 2005 – 2013

Universe:

The Thinking Healthy Program (THP) was a cluster-randomized trial addressing perinatal depression in rural Punjab, Pakistan.

The trial was randomized across 40 clusters, these being Union Councils, the smallest geopolitical unit. Twenty clusters were randomized

into receiving the intervention and twenty to the control arm. Women

were enrolled during April 2005-March 2006. All women in their third

trimester of pregnancy (married, ages 16-45, no other significant illness)

who met the DSM-IV criteria for Major Depressive Episode were invited

to participate in the study. A total of 3898 women were identified, with

8% refusing before any assessment, and 2% were not found.

A total of 3518 women were assessed for clinical depression, with 903

(26%) identified as prenatally depressed, a prevalence consistent with

previous estimates for this region (Rahman et al., 2003). There were 463

depressed mothers in the clusters randomized to the intervention, and

440 in the control arm. Only women diagnosed as depressed completed

the baseline survey.

Data Type(s): experimental data; program source code; text

Methodology

Response Rate:

The starting experimental sample consisted of 463 treated and 440 control mothers. At the 7-year follow-up, we located 295 of the control dyads and 289 of the intervention arm dyads, together corresponding to 64.8% of the baseline sample.

A third of the attrition was due to child mortality which was not different by treatment status. The non-experimental group interviewed at the 7-year follow-up consisted of 300 mother-child dyads, 150 from each arm.

Sampling:

All women in their third trimester of pregnancy (married, ages 16-45, no other significant illness) who met the DSM-IV criteria for Major Depressive Episode were invited to participate in the study. A total of 3898 women were identified, with 8% refusing before any assessment, and 2% were not found.

Collection Mode(s): computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI); computer-assisted self interview (CASI)

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V1 [2020-02-28]

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