We study the effect of income receipt in form of Old Age Pension (OAP) on the prevalence of depressive symptoms using the Centre of Epidemiologic Studies Short Depression Scale (CES-D 10). We exploit the exogenous age eligibility criteria in a regression discontinuity (RD) design to estimate the impact of OAP on depressive symptoms. Using the randomized inference approach, we find a statistically significant evidence that the OAP reduces depressive symptoms among the beneficiaries. We find this effect to be similar for male and female groups. Our result also suggest that the impact of OAP vary with depression scores i.e. those with high depression score tend to benefit more. We note that since the CES-D 10 is a screening tool, this result only provides an indication that the expected positive relationship between income and health holds in this context. Adeola Oyenubi (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand. He teaches Mathematical Economics at Honours and Masters level. His areas of research interest includes Impact Evaluation, Mathematical Economics and Financial Econometrics. Dr Oyenubi holds a BSc in Statistics (University of Ilorin, Nigeria), an MPhil in Mathematical Finance (UCT) and a PhD in Economics (UCT).
by 