Poster Paper:
Cash Transfers and Adolescent Mental Health: Causal Evidence and Mechanisms
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
successful transition to adulthood; however, income increases have been shown to improve child socioemotional
well-being. Using experimental data from an unconditional cash transfer program in Malawi,
this study analyzes the impact of a positive income shock on adolescent mental health. In addition, we
assess potential intervening pathways that lie on the causal pathway between household cash transfers and
adolescent mental health since parents are responsible for spending the cash and because there are no
conditions for how to use the money. The data for this study comes from a cluster-randomized study of
Malawi’s national Social Cash Transfer Program. After the baseline survey, households were randomly
chosen to the treatment group (T) to receive transfers immediately or to the later entry control group (C).
We use a two-wave panel of 3,369 households and 1,332 adolescents. Results from our differences-indifferences
model show no significant effects of the cash transfer on depression for the full sample.
However, for females and orphans known to be more at risk of depression, there is a significant reduction
of depression in the treatment arm. While there are strong impacts from the cash transfer on potential
intervening pathways, we do not find that these pathways explain much of the treatment effect on
adolescent mental health.
