Credit Market Conditions and Mental Health

Qing Hu (), Ross Levine (), Chen Lin and Mingzhu Tai ()
Additional contact information
Qing Hu: School of Finance, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
Mingzhu Tai: Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR 999077, China

Management Science, 2025, vol. 71, issue 3, 1967-1987

Abstract: Research offers conflicting predictions about the impact of credit conditions on mental health. We first assess how bank regulatory reforms that improved credit conditions, for example, by enhancing the efficiency of credit allocation and lowering lending rates, impacted mental health. We discover that among low-income individuals, these regulatory reforms reduced mental depression, boosted labor market outcomes, eased access to mortgage debt, and reduced the ranks of the “unbanked.” We also find that mergers of large regional banks that led to branch closures and tighter credit constraints in affected counties harmed the mental health of lower-income individuals in treated counties.

Keywords: health; financial institutions; personal finance; cost of capital; competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.00194 (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:inm:ormnsc:v:71:y:2025:i:3:p:1967-1987

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().