Effect of Maternal Mental Health on Cognitive Achievement of Children: Evidence from Ethiopia

This study examines the association between maternal mental health and cognitive achievement of Ethiopian children. It matches more than 1300 children and their mothers using two rounds of the Young Lives data set, which contains a relatively large sample size, unique outcome variables (test of cognitive achievement-PPVT and CDA), that allow less scope for bias of the test con-ductors, and rich set of control variables capturing child and household specific characteristics. Many early childhood studies argue that maternal depression at an early age of the child can have a lasting impact on cognitive achievement at later ages. This claim has important policy implications, as there is well documented evidence that early childhood cognitive achievement significantly affects future life outcomes. If maternal mental health is significant in affecting the cognitive achievement of children, then it means that attention should be paid to maternal mental health not only for the sake of the mother but also for the child. That is, policy concern on maternal mental health should not be focused merely on maternal health but rather, should go beyond and become the issue of generational wellbeing since the effect trickles down to the child. The results of this study, however, suggest that maternal (postnatal) depression when a child is about one year old does not have any association with the cognitive achievement of the child five years later. In addition, maternal depression is not associated with child nutritional status. However, higher self-esteem of the mother is found to have a positive and significant association with child cognitive achievement but not with child nutritional status. The possible implication is that maternal mental health per se is not a problem at least from the prospective of child cognitive achievement as the former was not (negatively) associated with the latter.