Abstract

Over pregnant women experience mental health issues, which may have long-term effects on the children’s health, cognitive and socioemotional skills, educational attainment, and future employment prospects? We pinpoint the psychological well-being of mothers before conception as having a causal impact on a variety of child psychological, socioemotional, and cognitive outcomes. Our approach takes advantage of the shocks to mothers' mental health caused by their friends' or relatives' illnesses while taking into consideration the non-randomness of exposure to disease. We discover that early childhood psychological and socioemotional skills are significantly impacted by mothers' mental health issues, although these effects diminish as children get older. Children's cognitive outcomes are unaffected. Therefore, our results imply that the direct impact of maternal prenatal mental health on children's development may be limited.