The effect of cash transfers on mental health - new evidence from South Africa.
Cash transfer
Fixed effects
Instrumental variable estimation
Mental health
Poverty
South Africa
Journal
BMC public health
ISSN: 1471-2458
Titre abrégé: BMC Public Health
Pays: England
ID NLM: 100968562
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
03 Apr 2020
03 Apr 2020
Historique:
received:
05
07
2019
accepted:
26
03
2020
entrez:
5
4
2020
pubmed:
5
4
2020
medline:
12
9
2020
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
Mental health and poverty are strongly interlinked. There is a gap in the literature on the effects of poverty alleviation programmes on mental health. We aim to fill this gap by studying the effect of an exogenous income shock generated by the Child Support Grant, South Africa's largest Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) programme, on mental health. We use biennial data on 10,925 individuals from the National Income Dynamics Study between 2008 and 2014. We exploit the programme's eligibility criteria to estimate instrumental variable Fixed Effects models. We find that receiving the Child Support Grant improves adult mental health by 0.822 points (on a 0-30 scale), 4.1% of the sample mean. Our findings show that UCT programmes have strong mental health benefits for the poor adult population.
Sections du résumé
BACKGROUND
BACKGROUND
Mental health and poverty are strongly interlinked. There is a gap in the literature on the effects of poverty alleviation programmes on mental health. We aim to fill this gap by studying the effect of an exogenous income shock generated by the Child Support Grant, South Africa's largest Unconditional Cash Transfer (UCT) programme, on mental health.
METHODS
METHODS
We use biennial data on 10,925 individuals from the National Income Dynamics Study between 2008 and 2014. We exploit the programme's eligibility criteria to estimate instrumental variable Fixed Effects models.
RESULTS
RESULTS
We find that receiving the Child Support Grant improves adult mental health by 0.822 points (on a 0-30 scale), 4.1% of the sample mean.
CONCLUSION
CONCLUSIONS
Our findings show that UCT programmes have strong mental health benefits for the poor adult population.
Identifiants
pubmed: 32245377
doi: 10.1186/s12889-020-08596-7
pii: 10.1186/s12889-020-08596-7
pmc: PMC7118950
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
436Subventions
Organisme : Medical Research Council
ID : MR/R015600/1
Pays : United Kingdom
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