Poster Paper:
Can Buy You Happiness?: Child Allowance As a Strategy to Address Maternal Well-Being
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Meeting Room 1 (Online Zoom Webinar)
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
This study aims to investigate the effects of child allowance in South Korea (hereafter, Korea) on maternal well-being, as measured by mothers’ physical and mental health. Child allowances in Korea were first introduced in September 2018 for which the bottom 90% of households (ranked by income and wealth) with children aged 0-5 (0-71 months) were eligible. Capitalizing on a national-level policy change, this study focuses on how an exogenous increase in income due to the policy change affects mothers’ self-reported health, depression, and life satisfaction. Data are drawn from a newly-released wave of 2018 and the previous wave of 2017 from the Korean Welfare Panel Study. This study employs a regression-discontinuity method combined with a difference-in-difference approach, exploiting an age-eligibility of the policy. I compare children aged 2-5 who are eligible for child allowances and children aged 6-7 who are just above the threshold. Furthermore, the difference-in-difference method allows us to account for age effects. Preliminary findings suggest that child allowance leads to an improvement in maternal depression symptoms and their life satisfaction, while it has no statistically significant impact on physical health. Given little research has done on this relatively new policy, the current study contributes to building new knowledge on the effects of child allowance in Korea. Moreover, it is the first to measure an as-of-yet unassessed outcome of maternal well-being.
