Economic Distress and Children’s Mental Health

Evidence from the Brazilian High-Risk Cohort Study for Mental Conditions

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9716487
AutoresLuiz Felipe Fontes (0000-0002-0097-3852, Insper), Matías Mrejen (0000-0003-2657-1445, Instituto de Saúde), Beatriz Rache (0000-0002-9936-3244, Anderson University - South Carolina), R Rocha (0000-0003-1181-0132, São Paulo School of Business Administration (FGV EAESP) , Brazil), Raphael Sá E Rocha (0009-0003-4693-2014)
Ano2024
Volume134
Fascículo660
Páginas1701-1718
Data de publicação2024-04-19
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Economic Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0013-0133 • E-ISSN: 1468-0297
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ej/uead109
OpenAlexW4389499041
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas33

This paper assesses the effects of adverse economic shocks on children’s mental health. We rely on the Brazilian High-Risk Cohort Study for mental conditions, which provides an unprecedented array of data on psychopathology, life events, family medical history as well as parental behaviour and polygenic scores for mental disorders over a ten-year period. Our empirical strategy exploits parental job loss events over time in a difference-in-differences framework. We document that parental job loss significantly worsens children’s mental health, resulting in increased clinical diagnoses of mental disorders. These results are robust to several specifications and pre-trends. Heterogeneous results and mechanism analysis indicate that psychological distress in the household brought about by job loss events may be a key mechanism affecting children’s mental health

Cohort · Cohort study · Distress · Economics · Job loss · Mental distress · Mental health · Psychiatry · Psychological distress · Psychopathology · Unemployment · Clinical Psychology · Employment and Welfare Studies · Global Health Care Issues · Health disparities and outcomes · Medicine · Psychology