Author(s)
Orla Doyle, Liam Delaney, Christine O Farrelly, Nick Fitzpatrick, Michael Daly

This study estimates the effect of a targeted policy intervention on global and experienced measures of maternal well-being. Participants from a disadvantaged community are randomly assigned during pregnancy to an intensive home visiting parenting program or a control group. The intervention has no impact on global well-being as measured by life satisfaction and parenting stress or experienced negative affect using episodic reports derived from the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM). Treatment effects are observed on measures of experienced positive affect from the DRM and a measure of mood yesterday. This suggests that early intervention may produce some improvements in experienced well-being.

JEL Codes
C12: Hypothesis Testing: General
C93: Field Experiments
I39: Welfare and Poverty: Other
J13: Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
I00: Health, Education, and Welfare: General
Keywords
well-being
randomized controlled trial
early intervention