Does stress shorten your life? Evidence from parental bereavement

Bernhard Schmidpeter

No 834, Ruhr Economic Papers from RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen

Abstract: This paper studies how stress affects the mortality risk. Using a flexible approach and allowing for timevarying treatment effects, I find no impact of stress on the short-run mortality risk but a substantially increase in the long-run. The effects are especially pronounced for men. I provide evidence that this is likely caused by changes towards adverse health behaviours as a reaction to stress. Investigating the possible protective effects of mental health support, I find that it can substantially lower the mortality risk for women. The results for men point towards lower effectiveness likely due to stigma effects associated with mental health care. Finally, I show that my results are robust to specific departure of my identifying assumptions.

Keywords: stress; mortality; mental health; bereavement; propensity score weighting; adjusted Kaplan-Meier Estimator; direct effects; indirect effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C31 C41 I11 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:rwirep:834

DOI: 10.4419/86788967

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