Leaving School Early: A Mediation Analysis Linking Adolescent Mental Health Disorders to Early Adult Outcomes

Anna Adamecz (), John Jerrim () and Szabó-Morvai, à Gnes ()
Additional contact information
Anna Adamecz: University College London and KRTK KTI
John Jerrim: University College London
Szabó-Morvai, à Gnes: KRTK KTI and University of Debrecen

No 18763, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: This paper examines the role of dropping out of school in the association between adolescent mental health disorders (MHDs) and subsequent early-life outcomes. Utilising an administrative panel dataset that links education, health, and employment records for half of the Hungarian school population, we track the life outcomes of a school cohort until age 22. Our findings indicate that adolescents diagnosed with an MHD between the ages of 14 and 16 are 5.8 percentage points (or 34%) more likely to drop out of secondary school compared to their peers, even after controlling for social background factors and educational performance. Furthermore, MHDs are associated with poorer early-life outcomes by age 22, including reduced employment rates, an increased likelihood of being neither in education nor employment, lower wages, and higher probabilities of motherhood, abortions, sexually transmitted diseases, and substance abuse. On average, approximately a third of these negative associations are mediated through school dropout but there are substantial differences across these outcomes.

Keywords: adolescent mental health; school dropout; school-to-work transition; NEET; abortion; substance abuse; sexually transmitted diseases; causal mediation analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I29 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp18763.pdf (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:iza:izadps:dp18763

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().