THE EFFECT OF MENTAL HEALTH ON EMPLOYMENT: EVIDENCE FROM AUSTRALIAN PANEL DATA

Paul Frijters, David Johnston and Michael Shields

Health Economics, 2014, vol. 23, issue 9, 1058-1071

Abstract: To what extent does poor mental health affect employment outcomes? Answering this question involves multiple technical difficulties: two‐way causality between health and work, unobservable confounding factors and measurement error in survey measures of mental health. We attempt to overcome these difficulties by combining 10 waves of high‐quality panel data with an instrumental variable model that allows for individual‐level fixed effects. We focus on the extensive margin of employment, and we find evidence that a one‐standard‐deviation decline in mental health reduces employment by 30 percentage points. Further investigations suggest that this effect is predominantly a supply rather than a demand‐side response and is larger for older than young workers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2014
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https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.3083

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:23:y:2014:i:9:p:1058-1071

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