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The Effects of Depressive Symptoms on Earnings

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  • Attila Cseh

Abstract

Conventional wisdom is that depression lowers productivity. The magnitude of this effect has been of interest to economists and other social scientists as well as medical researchers. In this paper, I take advantage of the longitudinal nature of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 to investigate the effects from a dynamic perspective and to control for unobserved heterogeneity in a fixed‐effects framework. Exploiting the fact that the data set provides information about depressive symptoms in multiple years, I am able to study how changes in depressive symptoms impact productivity. My results indicate that taking personality into account is important in estimating how depression affects wages. While ordinary least‐squares results render a strong negative significant effect to depressive symptom measures (especially in the men's sample), taking unobserved personal characteristics into account reduces the effects of these measures.

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  • Attila Cseh, 2008. "The Effects of Depressive Symptoms on Earnings," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 75(2), pages 383-409, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:75:y:2008:i:2:p:383-409
    DOI: 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2008.tb00910.x
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