Mental health around pregnancy and child development from early childhood to adolescence
研究发现母亲孕期心理健康问题会负面影响儿童早期心理和社会情感技能，但这种影响在11-13岁消失，且对认知能力无影响。
Mental health problems during pregnancy affect around 20% of mothers and may have lasting impacts on children’s health, cognitive and socio-emotional skills, educational attainment, and future labour market outcomes. We identify the causal effect of mothers’ prenatal mental health on a range of child psychological, socio-emotional and cognitive outcomes. Our methodology exploits shocks to mothers’ mental health that are induced by illness of the mother’s friends or relatives, whilst accounting for the non-randomness of exposure to illness. We find that mothers’ mental health problems negatively affect children’s psychological and socio-emotional skills in early childhood, but these fade-out between the ages of 11-13. There is no effect on children’s cognitive outcomes. Hence, our findings suggest that maternal prenatal mental health may have a limited direct effect on children’s future labour market outcomes.