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Freie Universität Bozen

StandortRoom BZ E4.23, Universitätsplatz 1 - Piazza Università, 1, 39100 Bozen-Bolzano

Dienststellen Press and Events

Kontakt Claudia Resch
SchoolofEconomics@unibz.it

17 Mai 2018 12:30-13:30

Maternal Depression, Women's Empowerment, and Parental Investment

Pietro Biroli, University of Zurich

StandortRoom BZ E4.23, Universitätsplatz 1 - Piazza Università, 1, 39100 Bozen-Bolzano

Dienststellen Press and Events

Kontakt Claudia Resch
SchoolofEconomics@unibz.it


We evaluate the medium-term impacts of treating maternal depression on women's financial empowerment and parenting decisions. We leverage experimental variation induced by a cluster-randomized control trial that provided psychotherapy to perinatally depressed mothers in rural Pakistan. It was one of the largest psychotherapy interventions in the world and highly successful at reducing depression. We locate mothers seven years after the end of the intervention to evaluate its longer run effects. We find that the intervention improved women's financial empowerment, increasing their control over household spending. Additionally, the intervention increased both time- and monetary-intensive parental investments, but no detectable effect was found for child development. Increases in empowerment and investments tend to favor girls, for whom we also detect improvements inparenting style. 


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