Impacts of Child Development Accounts on maternal depressive symptoms: evidence from a randomized statewide policy experiment.
This study examines the impact of Child Development Accounts (CDAs)-asset-building accounts created for children at birth-on the depressive symptoms of mothers in a statewide randomized experiment conducted in the United States. The experiment identified the primary caregivers of children born in Oklahoma during 2007, and 2704 of the caregivers completed a baseline interview before random assignment to the treatment (n = 1358) or the control group (n = 1346). To treatment participants, the experiment offered CDAs built on the existing Oklahoma 529 College Savings Plan. The baseline and follow-up surveys measured the participants' depressive symptoms with a shortened version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). In models that control for baseline CES-D scores, the mean follow-up score of treatment mothers is .17 lower than that of control mothers (p < .05). Findings suggest that CDAs have a greater impact among subsamples that reported lower income or lower education. Although designed as an economic intervention for children, CDAs may improve parents' psychological well-being. Findings also suggest that CDAs' impacts on maternal depressive symptoms may be partially mediated through children's social-emotional development.
School of Social Work, College for Public Health and Social Justice, Saint Louis University, 3550 Lindell Blvd., Tegeler Hall Room 211, St. Louis, MO 63103, United States. Electronic address: jhuang5@slu.edu.
Jin
J
Huang
Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1196, St. Louis, MO 63130, United States. Electronic address: sherrad@wustl.edu.
Michael
M
Sherraden
Brown School of Social Work, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1196, St. Louis, MO 63130, United States. Electronic address: jpurnell@brownschool.wustl.edu.
Jason Q
JQ
Purnell
D000328:Adult; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006291:Health Policy; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009825:Oklahoma; D036301:Qualitative Research; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D055815:Young Adult
Asset building; Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D); Child Development Accounts; Economic intervention; Maternal depressive symptoms; Saving; Social–emotional development; United States