IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mcm/sedapp/92.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Immigrant Mental Health and Unemployment

Author

Listed:
  • Steven Kennedy

Abstract

The objective of this research is to assess whether stress associated with the transition to a new country combined with additional stress arising from unemployment affects the mental health of immigrants. I use the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia (LSIA) to examine the effect of labour force status on the mental health of immigrants. By using a rich longitudinal data set, I am able to control for individual immigrant differences whilst examining whether changes in mental health cause changes in labour force status rather than changes in labour force status causing changes in mental health. I find that causality runs from unemployment to mental health and that unemployment significantly adversely affects the mental health of immigrants. Other characteristics associated with poor mental health include; age, gender, visa category, marital status and educational attainment.

Suggested Citation

  • Steven Kennedy, 2003. "Immigrant Mental Health and Unemployment," Social and Economic Dimensions of an Aging Population Research Papers 92, McMaster University.
    • Handle: RePEc:mcm:sedapp:92
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/sedap/p/sedap92.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clark, Andrew E & Oswald, Andrew J, 1994. "Unhappiness and Unemployment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 104(424), pages 648-659, May.
    2. Ettner, Susan L., 1996. "New evidence on the relationship between income and health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 67-85, February.
    3. Ezzy, Douglas, 1993. "Unemployment and mental health: A critical review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 41-52, July.
    4. Baker, Michael & Benjamin, Dwayne, 1997. "The Role of the Family in Immigrants' Labor-Market Activity: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(4), pages 705-727, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Steven Kennedy & James Ted Mcdonald, 2006. "Immigrant Mental Health and Unemployment," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 82(259), pages 445-459, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gardner, Jonathan & Oswald, Andrew J., 2007. "Money and mental wellbeing: A longitudinal study of medium-sized lottery wins," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 49-60, January.
    2. Marco Caliendo & Robert Mahlstedt & Gerard J. van den Berg & Johan Vikström, 2023. "Side effects of labor market policies," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 125(2), pages 339-375, April.
    3. Maite Blázquez Cuesta & Elena Cottini & Herrarte, A. (Ainhoa), 2012. "GINI DP 39: Socioeconomic Gradient in Health: How Important is Material Deprivation?," GINI Discussion Papers 39, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    4. Jones, Andrew M. & Wildman, John, 2008. "Health, income and relative deprivation: Evidence from the BHPS," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 308-324, March.
    5. Benedicte Apouey & Andrew E. Clark, 2015. "Winning Big but Feeling no Better? The Effect of Lottery Prizes on Physical and Mental Health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(5), pages 516-538, May.
    6. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-00566789 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Steven Kennedy & James Ted Mcdonald, 2006. "Immigrant Mental Health and Unemployment," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 82(259), pages 445-459, December.
    8. Martin Binder & Alex Coad, 2015. "Heterogeneity in the Relationship Between Unemployment and Subjective Wellbeing: A Quantile Approach," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 82(328), pages 865-891, October.
    9. Suppa, Nicolai, 2021. "Unemployment and subjective well-being," GLO Discussion Paper Series 760, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    10. P. Taylor, Mark & J. Pevalin, David & Todd, Jennifer, 2006. "The psychological costs of unsustainable housing commitments," ISER Working Paper Series 2006-08, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    11. Maite Blázquez Cuesta & Santiago Budría, 2013. "Does income deprivation affect people’s mental well-being?," Working Papers 1312, Banco de España.
    12. Boyd-Swan, Casey & Herbst, Chris M. & Ifcher, John & Zarghamee, Homa, 2013. "The Earned Income Tax Credit, Health, and Happiness," IZA Discussion Papers 7261, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Colantone, Italo & Crinò, Rosario & Ogliari, Laura, 2019. "Globalization and mental distress," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 181-207.
    14. Catherine Sofer & Natalia Radtchenko & Ekaterina Kalugina, 2008. "Une analyse du partage intra familial du revenu à partir de données subjectives," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 186(5), pages 101-116.
    15. Chen, Zhuo & Eastwood, David B. & Yen, Steven T., 2005. "Childhood Malnutrition In China: Change Of Inequality In A Decade," 2005 Annual meeting, July 24-27, Providence, RI 19205, American Agricultural Economics Association (New Name 2008: Agricultural and Applied Economics Association).
    16. Hugh Gravelle & Matt Sutton, 2009. "Income, relative income, and self‐reported health in Britain 1979–2000," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(2), pages 125-145, February.
    17. Haobin Fan & Xuanyi Nie, 2020. "Impacts of Layoffs and Government Assistance on Mental Health during COVID-19: An Evidence-Based Study of the United States," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-23, September.
    18. Blanchflower, David G. & Oswald, Andrew J., 2008. "Is well-being U-shaped over the life cycle?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(8), pages 1733-1749, April.
    19. Ahn T. Le, 2003. "Female Labour Market Participation: Differences Between Primary and Tied Movers," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 03-17, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.
    20. Hye Yoon Chung & Youjin Hahn, 2021. "Work Transitions, Gender, and Subjective Well-Being," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 16(5), pages 2085-2109, October.
    21. McCausland, David & Pouliakas, Konstantinos & Theodossiou, Ioannis, 2005. "Some are Punished and Some are Rewarded: A Study of the Impact of Performance Pay on Job Satisfaction," MPRA Paper 14243, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Immigrants; Mental health; Unemployment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • J69 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mcm:sedapp:92. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/demcmca.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.