The Parenthood Penalty in Mental Health: Evidence from Austria and Denmark

Using Austrian and Danish administrative data, we examine the impacts of parenthood on mental health equality. Parenthood imposes a greater long-run mental health burden on mothers than on fathers: the percentage increase in mothers’ antidepressant prescriptions due to parenthood exceeds that of fathers by about 98.6 percentage points (Austria) and 34.8 points (Denmark). These parenthood penalties in mental health mainly reflect the demands of having and raising children rather than biology, relationship breakdown, or non-employment. Supporting this interpretation, we show that adoptive mothers encounter substantial penalties and also that employed, cohabiting mothers account for most of the increase in prescriptions. Given our results, one may call for interventions such as longer parental leave. However, additional quasiexperimental evidence demonstrates that such extensions increase rather than reduce the prevalence of mental health problems among mothers and thereby widen inequality.

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