Bounding the Causal Effect of Unemployment on Mental Health: Nonparametric Evidence from Four Countries

Kamila Cygan-Rehm, Daniel Kühnle () and Michael Oberfichtner
Additional contact information
Daniel Kühnle: University of Duisburg-Essen
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Daniel Kuehnle ()

No 10652, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: An important, yet unsettled, question in public health policy is the extent to which unemployment causally impacts mental health. The recent literature yields varying findings, which are likely due to differences in data, methods, samples, and institutional settings. Taking a more general approach, we provide comparable evidence for four countries with different institutional settings – Australia, Germany, the UK, and the US – using a nonparametric bounds analysis. Relying on fairly weak and partially testable assumptions, our paper shows that unemployment has a significant negative effect on mental health in all countries. Our results rule out effects larger than a quarter of a standard deviation for Germany and half a standard deviation for the Anglo-Saxon countries. The effect is significant for both men and women and materialises already for short periods of unemployment. Public policy should hence focus on early prevention of mental health problems among the unemployed.

Keywords: mental health; unemployment; bounds (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (61)

Published - published in: Health Economics, 2018, 26(12), 1844-1861

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10652.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Bounding the causal effect of unemployment on mental health: Nonparametric evidence from four countries (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10652

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().