The Health Externalities of Downsizing

Career Effects of Mental Health

“…wealth. Building on existing research on the effects of economic status on mental health (Haushofer and Shapiro 2016;Ridley, Rao, Schilbach, and Patel 2020;Ahammer, Grübl, and Winter-Ebmer 2020;Ahammer and Packham, 2020), on the intergenerational persistence of mental health outcomes (Aizer and Currie 2014, Persson and Rossin-Slater 2017, Van der Bergh et al 2015, and on the relationship between parents' earnings and children's mental health (Adhvaryu et al 2019), we demonstrate that access to treatment can be a powerful tool to reduce inequality in labor market outcomes due to differences in mental health. I.…”

“…Reduced earnings for people with mental health conditions point to an important link between mental health and labor market outcomes, but they cannot establish a causal effect of mental health on creativity. In fact, causality may operate in the oppositive direction if negative labor market shocks trigger mental health episodes (Ahammer, Grübl, and Winter-Ebmer 2020;Ahammer and Packham, 2020). 24 To address this issue and investigate the causal effect of mental health on labor market outcomes, we exploit the approval of lithium as a maintenance treatment for BD.…”

“…Ten years after the diagnosis, people with depression, BD, and schizophrenia earn 9, 23, and 31 percent less, respectively, relative to their pre-diagnosis earnings. Earnings begin to decline four years before a diagnosis consistent with people experiencing symptoms that reduce their ability to work or with job loss triggering a mental health episode (Ahammer, Grübl, and Winter-Ebmer 2020;Ahammer and Packham, 2020).…”

High-Pressure, High-Paying Jobs?

“…A sizable literature has investigated the health consequences of labor market developments. Recent studies for example analyze the health effects of downsizing (Østhus, 2012;Ahammer et al, 2020) and the link between firm sales and worker health (Hummels et al, 2019). The literature also investigates the link between job loss and health outcomes (Sullivan and von Wachter, 2009;Kuhn et al, 2009;Browning and Heinesen, 2012), the health effects of adverse economic conditions (Ruhm, 2000(Ruhm, , 2016Pierce and Schott, 2020), and the more general impact of working hours on health outcomes (e.g., Åkerstedt et al, 2001;Cygan-Rehm and Wunder, 2018;Berniell and Bietenbeck, 2020).…”

A hard pill to swallow? Parental health shocks and children's mental health

“…It has 1.505 million inhabitants representing 16.8% of the population. Per capita health care expenditures in 2017 were 4012 €, which was 6.5% below the Austrian average of 4291 €(Hofmarcher & Singhuber, 2019).7 The available outpatient health care data do not include medical diagnoses.8 In Section 4.3, we provide a robustness analysis at the intensive margin where we estimate health care expenditures (in €) for all outcomes.9 Numerous studies have exploited the timing of an event to identify causal effects of fatal or non-fatal health shocks(Alam, 2015;Bockerman et al, 2021;Bratti & Mendola, 2014;Druedahl & Martinello, 2021;Fadlon & Nielsen, 2019;Frimmel et al, 2020;García-Miralles & Gensowski, 2020;Kristiansen, 2021;Le & Nguyen, 2017;Mühlenweg et al, 2016;Norén, 2020;Rellstab et al, 2020), job displacements(Ahammer et al, 2020;Halla et al, 2020;Jacobson et al, 1993;Ruhm, 1991), family disruption(Persson & Rossin-Slater, 2018), or closing of administrative social security units(Deshpande & Li, 2019).10 The descriptives for parents in the treatment and control group are presented in Appendix TableA1. Appendix TableA2includes the full estimation output for parental outcomes.11 Full estimation output is presented in TableB1in Appendix B.12 In TableB2, we show the dynamic effects of parental health shocks on children's use of other medications.…”