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The interaction effect of child maintenance and family changes on the depressive symptoms of South African men: Insights from a Tobit mixed model

Marifa Muchemwa, University of Limpopo
Clifford Odimwegu, University of the Witwatersrand

This chapter examines the interaction effects of child maintenance payment and family change on the depressive symptoms of South African men. Multilevel Tobit regression, which is appropriate for longitudinal data with a dependent variable that is censored either from the bottom or the top is used. The study is a longitudinal study that used data from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS) across five waves (from 2008 to 2017) and is conducted biennially. Firstly, no evidence of a statistically significant difference between the depressive symptoms of the men who paid child maintenance and those who did not pay child maintenance at any of the conventional levels of statistical significance is reported. Secondly, on the family changes, using the men who did not experience a family change as the reference category, the only significant categories were those who became widowed and those who experienced multiple family changes. The interaction effects between child maintenance and family changes are all statistically insignificant showing no evidence of a statistically significant interaction effect of child maintenance and family changes on the depressive symptoms of South African men. More resources should be channelled towards the counselling of widowed men and those who experience multiple family changes.

Keywords: Multi-level modeling, Family demography, Health and morbidity, Longitudinal studies

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  Presented in Session P5.