Mental Health and Employment: A Bounding Approach Using Panel Data*
利用面板数据，估计心理健康恶化导致就业概率下降1.6个百分点，约占原始就业差距的10%，并发现固定效应估计在此情境下无偏。
Abstract The effect of mental health on employment is a key policy question, but reliable causal estimates are elusive. Exploiting panel data and extending recent techniques using selection on observables to provide information on selection along unobservables, we estimate that transitioning into poor mental health leads to a 1.6% point reduction in the probability of employment; approximately 10% of the raw employment gap. Selection into mental health is almost entirely based on time‐invariant characteristics, rendering fixed effects estimates unbiased in this context, meaning researchers no longer have to rely on the narrow local average treatment effects of most health/work IV studies.