Rising Young Worker Despair in the United States

David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson

No 34071, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Between the early 1990s and 2015 the relationship between mental despair and age was hump-shaped in the United States: it rose to middle-age, then declined later in life. That relationship has now changed: mental despair declines monotonically with age due to a rise in despair among the young. However, the relationship between age and mental despair differs by labor market status. The hump-shape in age still exists for those who are unable to work and the unemployed. The relation between mental despair and age is broadly flat, and has remained so, for homemakers, students and the retired. The change in the age-despair profile over time is due to increasing despair among young workers. Whilst the relationship between mental despair and age has always been downward sloping among workers, this relationship has become more pronounced due to a rise in mental despair among young workers. We find broad-based evidence for this finding in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) of 1993-2023, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 2008-2023, and in surveys by Pew, the Conference Board and Johns Hopkins University.

JEL-codes: I31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
Note: LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34071.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

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:nbr:nberwo:34071

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34071
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().