New IZA DPs -- Mental Health & Well-being
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IZA DP Alerts
Jun 4, 2026, 9:09:34 AM (10 days ago) Jun 4
to it...@umich.edu
New IZA Discussion Papers brought to you by IZA@LISER
Dear Italo Gutierrez,
These new IZA Discussion Papers are now available online.
DP 18536 - Prati/Senik:
Is It Possible to Raise National Happiness?
DP 18538 - Angelucci/Fabregas/Vazquez:
The Well-Being Effects of Digital Mental Health Care
DP 18549 - Bargain/Herault/Nettle:
Job Loss and Mental Health: The Role of Anticipation and Re-employment in Recovery Patterns
DP 18586 - Shin:
How an Unexpected Asylum Seeker Influx Affects Host Residents’ Mental Health: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from South Korea
DP 18623 - Hadah:
Peer Effects in Adolescent Mental Health
Please find the abstracts and download links below.
IZA DP No. 18536
Alberto Prati, Claudia Senik:
Is It Possible to Raise National Happiness?
Abstract:
We revisit the famous Easterlin paradox by considering that life evaluation scales refer to a changing context, hence they are regularly reinterpreted. We propose a simple model of rescaling based on both retrospective and current life evaluations, and apply it to unexploited archival data from the USA. When correcting for rescaling, we find that the well-being of Americans has substantially increased, on par with GDP, health, education, and liberal democracy, from the 1950s to the early 2000s. Using several datasets, we shed light on other happiness puzzles, including the apparent stability of life evaluations during COVID-19, why Ukrainians report similar levels of life satisfaction today as before the war, and the absence of parental happiness.
https://docs.iza.org/dp18536.pdf
IZA DP No. 18538
Manuela Angelucci, Raissa Fabregas, Antonia Vazquez:
The Well-Being Effects of Digital Mental Health Care
Abstract:
AI-powered mental health apps have attracted growing interest as a low-cost way to expand care. Yet questions remain about their effectiveness, safety, and whether they may crowd out psychotherapy. We evaluate one such app in a randomized controlled trial among 1,964 Mexican women with mild to severe psychological distress. Over six months, app access improved mental health by 0.3 standard deviations with no evidence of harm, improved sleep quality, increased healthful behaviors, and reduced missed work, yielding considerably larger benefits than costs. Treated participants were also more likely to seek traditional psychotherapy, but this increase does not explain most of the mental health gains. App use was high in the first month but then declined, as is common in digital interventions. Despite this drop in use, treatment effects persisted. Participants continued to implement practices promoted by the app, suggesting that even short-term engagement can produce durable improvements through sustained behavioral change.
https://docs.iza.org/dp18538.pdf
IZA DP No. 18549
Olivier B. Bargain, Nicolas Herault, Daniel Nettle:
Job Loss and Mental Health: The Role of Anticipation and Re-employment in Recovery Patterns
Abstract:
Job loss is known to adversely affect mental health, but the time course of recovery and the role of anticipation remain unclear. Using 22 annual waves (2001-2022) of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we estimate fixed-effects models to examine the relationship between redundancy and mental health (SF-36), incorporating subjective probability of job loss to refine anticipation measures. The final sample consists of 14,195 individuals and 4,251 redundancy events. Three key findings emerge. First, we document a generalized decline in mental health prior to job loss that is not confined to individuals who anticipate redundancy, suggesting psychological costs of impending job loss due to factors other than anticipation. Second, we document complete recovery among those who are re-employed, revealing that psychological restoration can occur relatively quickly upon securing new employment. Third, perceived anticipation of job loss does not appear to meaningfully alter these post-redundancy recovery trajectories. These findings call for greater emphasis on employment trajectories in both research and policy aimed at understanding and mitigating the mental health impacts of job loss.
https://docs.iza.org/dp18549.pdf
IZA DP No. 18586
Seonho Shin:
How an Unexpected Asylum Seeker Influx Affects Host Residents’ Mental Health: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from South Korea
Abstract:
The impact of sudden asylum seeker inflows on host residents’ mental health is largely unexplored. The present study addresses this research gap and provides the first causal evidence from the non-Western context by exploiting the unexpected influx of Yemeni asylum seekers to Jeju Island, South Korea. The influx affected the island ‘locally’ due to its region-specific visa-free entry policy and the host government’s immediate restrictions on the asylum seekers’ post-arrival cross-region movement off the island. Such a unique combination of entry policy, post-arrival containment, and geographic separation provides a well-defined quasi-experimental setting for causal investigation. Difference-in-differences estimates based on nationally representative, government-collected data suggest that the influx shock worsened host residents’ mental health outcomes—with higher depression and anxiety and lower life satisfaction. Furthermore, this study provides the evidence on the possible mechanisms linking the influx to hosts’ mental health, revealing heightened public safety worries and diminished trust in government.
https://docs.iza.org/dp18586.pdf
IZA DP No. 18623
Hussain Hadah:
Peer Effects in Adolescent Mental Health
Abstract:
This paper examines peer mental health’s influence on adolescents’ wellbeing, academic performance, and behavior. Using friends-of-friends as an instrument, I find that a one standard deviation increase in friends’ mental unwellness is associated with a 0.67 standard deviation increase in one’s own. Peers’ therapy participation significantly reduces individual mental unwellness while increasing therapy participation likelihood, highlighting positive spillover effects of interventions. The results reveal significant negative effects of peer mental unwellness on personal mental health, academic achievement, physical health, and risky behavior, confirming that adolescent mental health constitutes a social contagion.
https://docs.iza.org/dp18623.pdf
These new IZA Discussion Papers are now available online.
DP 18536 - Prati/Senik:
Is It Possible to Raise National Happiness?
DP 18538 - Angelucci/Fabregas/Vazquez:
The Well-Being Effects of Digital Mental Health Care
DP 18549 - Bargain/Herault/Nettle:
Job Loss and Mental Health: The Role of Anticipation and Re-employment in Recovery Patterns
DP 18586 - Shin:
How an Unexpected Asylum Seeker Influx Affects Host Residents’ Mental Health: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from South Korea
DP 18623 - Hadah:
Peer Effects in Adolescent Mental Health
Please find the abstracts and download links below.
IZA DP No. 18536
Alberto Prati, Claudia Senik:
Is It Possible to Raise National Happiness?
Abstract:
We revisit the famous Easterlin paradox by considering that life evaluation scales refer to a changing context, hence they are regularly reinterpreted. We propose a simple model of rescaling based on both retrospective and current life evaluations, and apply it to unexploited archival data from the USA. When correcting for rescaling, we find that the well-being of Americans has substantially increased, on par with GDP, health, education, and liberal democracy, from the 1950s to the early 2000s. Using several datasets, we shed light on other happiness puzzles, including the apparent stability of life evaluations during COVID-19, why Ukrainians report similar levels of life satisfaction today as before the war, and the absence of parental happiness.
https://docs.iza.org/dp18536.pdf
IZA DP No. 18538
Manuela Angelucci, Raissa Fabregas, Antonia Vazquez:
The Well-Being Effects of Digital Mental Health Care
Abstract:
AI-powered mental health apps have attracted growing interest as a low-cost way to expand care. Yet questions remain about their effectiveness, safety, and whether they may crowd out psychotherapy. We evaluate one such app in a randomized controlled trial among 1,964 Mexican women with mild to severe psychological distress. Over six months, app access improved mental health by 0.3 standard deviations with no evidence of harm, improved sleep quality, increased healthful behaviors, and reduced missed work, yielding considerably larger benefits than costs. Treated participants were also more likely to seek traditional psychotherapy, but this increase does not explain most of the mental health gains. App use was high in the first month but then declined, as is common in digital interventions. Despite this drop in use, treatment effects persisted. Participants continued to implement practices promoted by the app, suggesting that even short-term engagement can produce durable improvements through sustained behavioral change.
https://docs.iza.org/dp18538.pdf
IZA DP No. 18549
Olivier B. Bargain, Nicolas Herault, Daniel Nettle:
Job Loss and Mental Health: The Role of Anticipation and Re-employment in Recovery Patterns
Abstract:
Job loss is known to adversely affect mental health, but the time course of recovery and the role of anticipation remain unclear. Using 22 annual waves (2001-2022) of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, we estimate fixed-effects models to examine the relationship between redundancy and mental health (SF-36), incorporating subjective probability of job loss to refine anticipation measures. The final sample consists of 14,195 individuals and 4,251 redundancy events. Three key findings emerge. First, we document a generalized decline in mental health prior to job loss that is not confined to individuals who anticipate redundancy, suggesting psychological costs of impending job loss due to factors other than anticipation. Second, we document complete recovery among those who are re-employed, revealing that psychological restoration can occur relatively quickly upon securing new employment. Third, perceived anticipation of job loss does not appear to meaningfully alter these post-redundancy recovery trajectories. These findings call for greater emphasis on employment trajectories in both research and policy aimed at understanding and mitigating the mental health impacts of job loss.
https://docs.iza.org/dp18549.pdf
IZA DP No. 18586
Seonho Shin:
How an Unexpected Asylum Seeker Influx Affects Host Residents’ Mental Health: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from South Korea
Abstract:
The impact of sudden asylum seeker inflows on host residents’ mental health is largely unexplored. The present study addresses this research gap and provides the first causal evidence from the non-Western context by exploiting the unexpected influx of Yemeni asylum seekers to Jeju Island, South Korea. The influx affected the island ‘locally’ due to its region-specific visa-free entry policy and the host government’s immediate restrictions on the asylum seekers’ post-arrival cross-region movement off the island. Such a unique combination of entry policy, post-arrival containment, and geographic separation provides a well-defined quasi-experimental setting for causal investigation. Difference-in-differences estimates based on nationally representative, government-collected data suggest that the influx shock worsened host residents’ mental health outcomes—with higher depression and anxiety and lower life satisfaction. Furthermore, this study provides the evidence on the possible mechanisms linking the influx to hosts’ mental health, revealing heightened public safety worries and diminished trust in government.
https://docs.iza.org/dp18586.pdf
IZA DP No. 18623
Hussain Hadah:
Peer Effects in Adolescent Mental Health
Abstract:
This paper examines peer mental health’s influence on adolescents’ wellbeing, academic performance, and behavior. Using friends-of-friends as an instrument, I find that a one standard deviation increase in friends’ mental unwellness is associated with a 0.67 standard deviation increase in one’s own. Peers’ therapy participation significantly reduces individual mental unwellness while increasing therapy participation likelihood, highlighting positive spillover effects of interventions. The results reveal significant negative effects of peer mental unwellness on personal mental health, academic achievement, physical health, and risky behavior, confirming that adolescent mental health constitutes a social contagion.
https://docs.iza.org/dp18623.pdf
IZA DP Alerts | www.iza.org
If you have trouble downloading the papers, or for any other questions regarding the IZA Discussion Paper Series, please contact iza...@liser.lu.
IZA@LISER Network
Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences, L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval
Privacy Policy | Manage your subscriptions
If you have trouble downloading the papers, or for any other questions regarding the IZA Discussion Paper Series, please contact iza...@liser.lu.
IZA@LISER Network
Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
11, Porte des Sciences, L-4366 Esch-sur-Alzette / Belval
Privacy Policy | Manage your subscriptions
IZA DP Alerts
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