Mental health around pregnancy and child development from early childhood to adolescence

Mental health problems during pregnancy affect around 20% of mothers and may have lasting impacts on children’s health, cognitive socio-emotional skills, educational attainment, future labour market outcomes. We identify the causal effect mothers’ prenatal mental a range child psychological, Our methodology exploits shocks to that are induced by illness mother’s friends or relatives, whilst accounting for non-randomness exposure illness. find negatively psychological skills in early childhood, but these fade-out between ages 11-13. There is no Hence, our findings suggest maternal limited direct