A Mother’s Struggle: The Effect of Maternal Depression on Household Food Insecurity

Abstract

Maternal depression is a very prevalent mental disorder targeting new mothers. This study aims to measure the effects that maternal depression has on household food insecurity for households in the United States. I use data from the “Fragile Families Child Well Being Study” to run three models attempting to measure for a causal relationship between the two variables. There is found to be convincing evidence that a causal relationship between maternal depression and household food insecurity exists. These results imply that there should be more done to decrease rates of maternal depression in the US, in an effort to also slow the rate of household food insecurity.