Why Does Mental Health Deteriorate in Adults? The Role of in Utero Malnutrition and Son-Preference

From a life-course perspective, we examine how early childhood malnutrition impacts middle-aged adults’ mental health. Using data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), we employ cohort difference in differences (DID) to estimate the causal effects. We construct instrumental variables that were associated with the special institutional determinants of the Great Famine to overcome the problem of omitted variables bias. To overcome bias caused by selection for survival, we control for observable characteristics of family and community. As a result of our study, we are strongly and robustly able to conclude that in-utero exposure to malnutrition significantly deteriorated mental health in adult. According to our analysis of the heterogeneous effects, son preference culture contributes to socioeconomic and gender-related health inequities. Taken together, our findings imply that policies that improve the early childhood nutritional status yield benefits on mental health during adulthood