A Structural Analysis of Mental Health and Labor Market Trajectories

We analyze the joint life-cycle dynamics of labor market and mental health outcomes while allowing for two-way interactions between work and mental health. We model selection into jobs on a labor market with search frictions, accounting for the level of exposure to stress in each job using data on occupational health contents. Taking our model to British data from Understanding Society combined with information from O*NET, we estimate the impact of job characteristics on health dynamics and the effects of health and job stress contents on career choices. We use our model to quantify the effects of job loss, health shocks or job stress shocks that propagate over the life cycle through both health and work channels. We also estimate the (large) values workers attach to health, employment or non-stressful jobs.

• Publication year

  2024

• Venue

  Social Science Research Network

• Publication date

  2024-06-25

• Fields of study

  Economics, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.2139/ssrn.3660265
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Searching for Job Security and the Consequences of Job Loss

  2021cited by this paper
• Health Shocks and the Evolution of Earnings over the Life-Cycle

  2019cited by this paper
• A Distributional Framework for Matched Employer Employee Data

  2019influential reference
• The Changing (Dis-)Utility of Work.

  2018cited by this paper
• The Disability Option: Labor Market Dynamics with Macroeconomic and Health Risks

  2018cited by this paper
• Discretizing Unobserved Heterogeneity

  2017cited by this paper
• Why medical innovation is valuable: Health, human capital, and the labor market

  2016cited by this paper
• Too stressed to work : The Effects of Job Stressors on Health and Employment Outcomes

  2016cited by this paper
• Labor force transitions at older ages: burnout, recovery, and reverse retirement

  2016cited by this paper
• THE IMPACT OF BODY WEIGHT ON OCCUPATIONAL MOBILITY AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT

  2015cited by this paper
• Fit Mind, Fit Job : From Evidence to Practice in Mental Health and Work

  2015cited by this paper
• Grouped Patterns of Heterogeneity in Panel Data

  2015cited by this paper
• Occupational hazards and social disability insurance

  2014cited by this paper
• The Macrodynamics of Sorting between Workers and Firms

  2013cited by this paper
• Recessions and the Cost of Job Loss

  2011cited by this paper
• Job Displacement and Mortality: An Analysis Using Administrative Data

  2009cited by this paper
• A Comparison of Heuristic Procedures for Minimum Within-Cluster Sums of Squares Partitioning

  2007cited by this paper
• Validity of the mental health component scale of the 12-item Short-Form Health Survey (MCS-12) as measure of common mental disorders in the general population.

  2007cited by this paper
• The Effects of Health, Wealth, and Wages on Labour Supply and Retirement Behaviour

  2005cited by this paper
• Wage Risk and Employment Risk over the Life Cycle ∗

  2004cited by this paper
• Social inequalities and the common mental disorders

  2003cited by this paper
• The Effects of Health Insurance and Self-Insurance on Retirement Behavior

  2001cited by this paper
• Reliability and Validity of the SF-12 Health Survey Among People With Severe Mental Illness

  2000cited by this paper
• The Cost of Job Loss

  1999influential reference
• Health, Health Insurance and the Labor Market

  1998cited by this paper
• A Dynamic Stochastic Model of Medical Care Use and Work Absence

  1998cited by this paper
• A 12-Item Short-Form Health Survey: construction of scales and preliminary tests of reliability and validity.

  1996cited by this paper
• The economics of mental health.

  1970cited by this paper

• An invisible health killer? The psychological cost of energy poverty from a gendered perspective in China

  2025cites this paper
• Emerging trends in mental health and work performance research: a bibliometric analysis and future research agenda

  2025cites this paper
• A Dynamic Factor Model of Skill Formation and Mental Health: Counterfactual Analysis of Interventions for Social Mobility

  2025cites this paper
• Firm quality and health maintenance.

  2024cites this paper
• HEALTH, HEALTH INSURANCE, AND INEQUALITY

  2024cites this paper
• The Economic Burden of Burnout

  2024cites this paper
• The effect of retirement eligibility on mental health in the United Kingdom: Heterogeneous effects by occupation.

  2024cites this paper
• Mental Health and Employment: A Bounding Approach Using Panel Data*

  2020cites this paper
• What Good Are Treatment Effects without Treatment? Mental Health and the Reluctance to Use Talk Therapy

  2020cites this paper
• How Do Mental and Physical Health Influence Career and Family Choices?

  year unknowncites this paper