Child support grant expansion and cognitive function among women in rural South Africa: Findings from a natural experiment in the HAALSI cohort.

Autor: Chakraborty R; Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America., Kobayashi LC; Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States of America., Jock J; O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University-Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America., Wing C; O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University-Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America., Chen X; Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America., Phillips M; Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America., Berkman L; Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America., Kahn K; MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.; Department of Epidemiology and Global Health, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden., Kabudula CW; MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa., Rosenberg M; Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America.; MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: PloS one [PLoS One] 2024 Mar 06; Vol. 19 (3), pp. e0297673. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Mar 06 (Print Publication: 2024).
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0297673
Abstrakt: Background: Cash transfers are a promising but understudied intervention that may protect cognitive function in adults. Although South Africa has a rapidly ageing population, little is known about the nature of association between cash transfers and cognitive function in this setting.
Objectives: We leveraged age-eligibility expansions to South Africa's Child Support Grant (CSG) to investigate the association between duration of CSG eligibility and cognitive function of biological mothers of child beneficiaries in South Africa.
Methods: We analysed 2014/2015 baseline data from 944 women, aged 40-59 years with at least one CSG-eligible child, enrolled in the population-representative HAALSI cohort in Agincourt, South Africa. Duration of CSG eligibility for each mother was calculated based on the birth dates of all their children and the CSG age-eligibility expansion years (2003-2012). Cognitive function was measured using a cognitive battery administered at the HAALSI baseline interview. Linear regression was used to estimate the association between duration of CSG eligibility, dichotomized as low (≤10 years) and high (>10 years) eligibility, and cognitive function z-scores of the mothers.
Results: High vs. low duration of CSG eligibility, was associated with higher cognitive function z-scores in the full sample [β: 0.15 SD units; 95% CI: 0.04, 0.26; p-value = 0.01]. In mothers with one to four lifetime children, but not five or more, high vs. low duration of CSG eligibility, was associated with higher cognitive function z-scores [β: 0.19 SD units; 95% CI: 0.05, 0.34, p-value = 0.02].
Conclusion: Government cash transfers given to support raising children may confer substantial protective effects on the subsequent cognitive function of mothers. Further studies are needed to understand how parity may influence this relationship. Our findings bring evidence to policymakers for designing income supplementation programmes to promote healthy cognitive ageing in low-income settings.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2024 Chakraborty et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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