AN INSTRUMENTAL VARIABLE APPROACH TO UNEMPLOYMENT, PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AND SOCIAL NORM EFFECTS
利用英国家庭面板数据，通过工具变量方法估计失业对心理健康的因果影响，发现失业显著恶化心理健康，但当地高失业率可缓解这种负面效应。
This empirical study presents estimates of the impact of unemployment on psychological health using U.K. household panel data. The causal impact of unemployment is established using instrumental variable methods. Psychological health is measured using both the General Household Questionnaire measure and also self-reported data on individual occurrences of anxiety-related conditions. We find evidence for positive selection into unemployment on the basis of poor psychological health. Nevertheless, panel instrumental variable estimates suggest a sizeable causal worsening of psychological health arising from unemployment. We also find evidence that the negative impact of unemployment can be largely mitigated by local labour market conditions: those entering unemployment in localities with higher unemployment rates suffer less deterioration in their psychological health.