Depression is often neglected in current health policy debates on chronic disease care in low-resource settings, despite its sizable economic and social impact on those affected. Depression is strongly associated with low earnings, low productivity, reduced human capital investments and low levels of social participation. Given the likely bi-directional causal relationship between mental health and socioeconomic outcomes, depression is likely to be a major driver of health-related poverty traps and a key obstacle to health-led economic development. Like all of our other experiments, this proposed mental health intervention will also look its impact on (mental) health as well as economic and social outcomes, but also allows us to include an additional innovation in studying the interaction between illness and socio-economic status, which can be implemented with the help of a local social service organization, Grameena Abudaya Seva Samsthe (GASS).
The purpose of the proposed intervention is at least threefold:
(1) To evaluate the impact of depression treatment on (mental) health and socioeconomic outcomes;
(2) To evaluate the impact of economic assistance on depression; and
(3) To assess whether economic circumstances moderate the impact of depression treatment.
To achieve this goal, the study will collaborate with the international non-profit organization Basic Needs (BN) and GASS to enlist 1,500 adult women with mild or moderate depression who stand to benefit from job placement (persons suspected to suffer from severe depression will be directly referred to a medical setting).
Research Team
Daniel bennett
Daniel Bennett is an economist at the Center for Economic and Social Research at the University of Southern California. He studies economic development and global health in Africa and South Asia. Much of Dr. Bennett’s work examines the way that information affects individual health care decisions and the operation of health care markets. He also focuses on the influence of mental health on productivity and economic decision-making. Dr. Bennett’s work involves primary data collection and uses both experimental and quasi-experimental methods. He received his Ph.D. in 2008 from Brown University and spent eight years on the faculty at the University of Chicago.
Jürgen Maurer
Swiss Team member
Jürgen Maurer holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy and currently works as Professor of Health Economics and Management at the Department of Economics and the Institute for Health Economics and Management at the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC) of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. He is also an Adjunct Economist at the RAND Corporation, a senior research fellow at the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging, and a fellow at the Health, Econometrics, and Data Group of the University of York and the Center for Economic and Social Research at the University of Southern California. His research interests are in the areas of applied microeconomics, health economics, public health and survey research with a special focus on economic and social research on aging. Jürgen also serves as the principal investigator and country team leader of the Swiss component study of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and main applicant of a large-scale research for development (r4d) project on “Inclusive social protection for chronic health problems” supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
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His papers have been published in economics, health economics, medical, public health and demography journals such as the Economic Journal, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Health Economics, Health Economics, the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA: Internal Medicine, the Lancet, the American Journal of Public Health, the American Journal of Epidemiology and Demography among others.
Publications
2024
Angelucci, M., & Bennett, D. (2024). Depression, Poverty, and Economic Shocks: Evidence from India. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 114: 412–17. https://doi.org/10.1257/pandp.20241060
Angelucci, M., & Bennett, D. (2024). The Economic Impact of Depression Treatment in India: Evidence from Community-Based Provision of Pharmacotherapy. The American Economic Review, 114(1), 169–198. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20210687
Non Peer reviewed Publications
Angelucci, M., & Bennett, D. (2023). Impact of community-based depression treatment: evidence from India [Research Brief]. https://r4d-ncd.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/r4d_research-brief_updated-copy_08.02.2023.pdf
Angelucci, M., & Bennett, D. (2023). Impact of Community-based depression treatment: evidence from India [Infographic]. https://r4d-ncd.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/r4d-infographic_08.02.2023.pdf
PROJECT FUNDED BY
Inclusive social protection for chronic health problems 