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The impact of public assistance on child mental health in Japan: results from A-CHILD study

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Abstract

Public assistance is one option for providing a safety net to protect the health of children, but assistance may also generate feelings of shame that impact self-esteem. This study aims to elucidate the impact of public assistance on child mental health. We used cross-sectional data on 6920 first graders from the Adachi Child Health Impact of Living Difficulty (A-CHILD) study. We found children living in relative poverty had more behavioral problems, low resilience, and were likely to refuse to go to school. After propensity-score matching among low-income households, the likelihood of children refusing to go to school was larger in the families receiving assistance as compared to non-recipients (OR 4.00, 95% CI 0.85–18.84) although there were no significant differences between recipients and non-recipients in low-income households. Our study produced insufficient evidence to indicate that social assistance is associated with child mental health, resilience, or school refusal.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by a Health Labour Sciences Research Grant, Comprehensive Research on Lifestyle Disease from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (H27-Jyunkankito-ippan-002), Research of Policy Planning and Evaluation from the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (H29-Seisaku-Shitei-004), Innovative Research Program on Suicide Countermeasures (IRPSC), and Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 16H03276 and 16K21669), St. Luke’s Life Science Institute Grants, and the Japan Health Foundation Grants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Global Health Promotion, Tokyo Medical and Dental University (TMDU), 1-5-45 Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8510, Japan

    Yuna Koyama, Takeo Fujiwara, Aya Isumi & Satomi Doi

  2. Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciene, 5-3-1 Kojimachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 102-0083, Japan

    Aya Isumi & Satomi Doi

  3. Department of Health and Welfare Services, National Institute of Public Health, Saitama, Japan

    Manami Ochi

  4. Department of Social Medicine, National Center for Child Health and Development, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Japan

    Manami Ochi

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  1. Yuna Koyama
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  2. Takeo Fujiwara
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Correspondence to Takeo Fujiwara.

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Koyama, Y., Fujiwara, T., Isumi, A. et al. The impact of public assistance on child mental health in Japan: results from A-CHILD study. J Public Health Pol 42, 98–112 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41271-020-00254-x

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