Seminar
Childhood Mental Health Effects of Early-Life Exposure to Paternal Job Loss
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Series
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Speaker
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FieldEmpirical Microeconomics
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LocationOnline
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Date and time
September 09, 2021
12:00 - 13:00
We study the mental health effects of early life
exposure to paternal job loss. Using nationwide individual-level administrative
register records, we focus on firm-closure-induced job losses for fathers with
children below age five in the Netherlands. These children are more likely to
take mental health-related medicines in their later childhood, and this
increase is mainly driven by psychostimulant drugs. The increased uptake of
psychostimulants ranges from 15 percent of mean uptake in the control group at
age five to around 9 percent at age twelve. The effects are significantly
larger for families with mothers being the main breadwinner, suggesting that
the drop in paternal income resulting from displacement is not the main driver
of psychostimulant uptake. We further find that the father is more likely to
take mental health medication around the time of job loss and that the children
exposed to paternal job loss are more likely to live in dissolved families. We
find no evidence of exposed children living in neighborhoods with different
rates of psychostimulant consumption compared to control children, while
parents of treated children do report more impulsive behavior and inattention
symptoms. These findings altogether indicate that differences in the diagnosis
and/or prescription of psychostimulants across different neighborhoods or
schools cannot explain our findings. Instead, our analyses suggest that
within-household dynamics such as chaotic household environment is the most
likely pathways leading to higher mental health medication usage among children
exposed to early-life paternal job loss.
joint work with: Tom van Ourti and Pilar Garcia-Gomez