{"title":"Workplace autonomy and mental health","authors":"Joe Spearing","doi":"10.1016/j.ehb.2025.101469","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ehb.2025.101469","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This paper explores the relationship between work-related autonomy and mental health. Using Understanding Society data from the United Kingdom, I assess the association between mental health and autonomy, defined across five different dimensions, using a range of different controls, including person and occupation fixed effects. I find low work-related autonomy consistently associates with poor mental health. The degree of selection bias on observable controls is small. Finally, I bound causal effects under assumptions about the degree of confoundedness of unobservables, and assess the possibility of reverse causality.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50554,"journal":{"name":"Economics & Human Biology","volume":"56 ","pages":"Article 101469"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143155815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alex Bryson, Tim Morris, David Bann, David Wilkinson
{"title":"The gender wage gap across life: Effects of genetic predisposition towards higher educational attainment","authors":"Alex Bryson, Tim Morris, David Bann, David Wilkinson","doi":"10.1016/j.ehb.2025.101471","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ehb.2025.101471","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using two polygenic scores (PGS) for educational attainment in a biomedical study of all those born in a single week in Great Britain in 1958 we show that the genetic predisposition for educational attainment is associated with labour market participation and wages over the life-course for men and women. Those with a higher PGS spend more time in employment and full-time employment and, when in employment, earn higher hourly wages. The employment associations are four times larger for women than for men. Conditional on employment, the PGS wage associations are sizeable, persistent and similar for men and women through to age 55. A one standard deviation increase in the PGS is associated with a 5–10 log point increase in hourly earnings. The size of the association is a little smaller for men aged 23. These associations are robust to non-random selection into employment and to controls for parental education. Between one-quarter and one-half of the PGS association with time in employment, and one-third to one-half of the PGS association with earnings, are mediated via educational attainment. Our results suggest that genetic endowments of a cohort born a half century ago continued to play a significant role in their fortunes in the labor market of the 21st Century.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50554,"journal":{"name":"Economics & Human Biology","volume":"56 ","pages":"Article 101471"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143069319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Fanke Zhou , Lifan Ding , Yuxi Li , Jiajia Hu , Junna Zhang , Yixiao Geng , Xiaolei Ban , Wencan Wu , Xiaomin Lou , Xian Wang
{"title":"Height development trends among 7–18-year-old school-age children in central plains of China between 2000 and 2019: A serial cross-sectional surveillance study in China","authors":"Fanke Zhou , Lifan Ding , Yuxi Li , Jiajia Hu , Junna Zhang , Yixiao Geng , Xiaolei Ban , Wencan Wu , Xiaomin Lou , Xian Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101467","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101467","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Objective</h3><div>The aim of this study was to analyze changes in height of 7–18-year-old school-age children in China during the year of 2000–2019.</div></div><div><h3>Methods</h3><div>We used the survey data from the Chinese National Survey on Students’ Constitution and Health in Henan Province for the years 2000, 2005, 2010, 2014, and 2019. Data were categorized into subgroups based on geographic location, gender, and age; mean, standard deviation, and Pearson's correlation coefficient were used to analyze trends in height change among children and adolescents and the correlation between socioeconomic indicators and height change.</div></div><div><h3>Results</h3><div>The height of children and adolescents in Henan has shown a continuous upward trend. The height difference between urban and rural areas has gradually narrowed but has not disappeared. The correlation of height development trends between neighbouring urban areas was higher than in other areas. The level of medical care was significantly associated with the change in height for both boys (r = 0.950, p = 0.013) and girls (r = 0.897, p = 0.039); GDP per capita (r = 0.940,p = 0.018) was significantly associated with the change in height for boys only.</div></div><div><h3>Conclusion</h3><div>The height of Chinese children and adolescents will continue to maintain a positive growth trend, but we need to pay attention to the health status and nutritional intake of children and adolescents in economically disadvantaged areas in order to narrow the height disparity between different socio-economic groups.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50554,"journal":{"name":"Economics & Human Biology","volume":"56 ","pages":"Article 101467"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142910753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Minimum wages and alcohol consumption: Evidence from Canadian longitudinal microdata","authors":"Yihong Bai , Michael R. Veall","doi":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101464","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101464","url":null,"abstract":"<div><h3>Objective</h3><div>The objective is to estimate the effect of provincial minimum wage increases in Canada on heavy drinking, binge drinking and average daily alcohol consumption.</div></div><div><h3>Method</h3><div>We estimate standard regression models by gender-age group with drinking behaviours as the dependent variables and the minimum wage among the independent variables. We employ the Canadian National Population Health Survey which began in 1994 and ended in 2011, a period comparable to that used by many U.S. studies. The longitudinal feature of the Canadian microdata is an advantage over most U.S. datasets, allowing control for individual fixed effects, including unobserved propensities regarding alcohol. As in U.S. studies, estimation relies on differences in timing and size of minimum wage changes across jurisdictions.</div></div><div><h3>Results</h3><div>We find no consistent evidence that minimum wage increases increase drinking overall. Indeed, for less-educated males ages 26–64, we estimate that a $1 increase (about 15 %) in the real minimum wage would have reduced the prevalence of heavy drinking by 2.2 percentage points and average daily alcohol consumption by 0.15 standard drinks, with wild bootstrap 95 % confidence intervals (-4.3, −0.1) and (-0.28, −0.07) respectively. Our estimates for females are less consistent but some point towards modest increases in drinking.</div></div><div><h3>Conclusions</h3><div>Besides our strongest finding of no evidence that minimum wages increase drinking overall, our findings can also be seen as consistent with earlier research on this same Canadian dataset that found minimum wage increases reduced stress in less-educated male workers.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50554,"journal":{"name":"Economics & Human Biology","volume":"56 ","pages":"Article 101464"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142900038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How important is girls’ ‘Biological Head Start’ in explaining gender differences in education and the labour market?","authors":"Marianne Røed, Pål Schøne, Marte Strøm","doi":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101466","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101466","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate whether gender differences in physical maturity during adolescence can explain gender differences in educational and labour market performance. Using survey data with measures of physical maturity linked to register data on education and labour market outcomes, we analyse the importance of physical maturity for gender differences in both the short and long terms. The results show that gender differences in physical maturity partially explain both the gender gap in educational performance (in girls’ favour) and the gender gap in labour market outcomes at age 33 (in boys’ favour). Taken together, the results suggest that girls’ physical head start gives them an advantage in the schooling system and that this advantage continues long into adulthood, indicating that the head start has long-lasting cumulative effects on learning.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50554,"journal":{"name":"Economics & Human Biology","volume":"56 ","pages":"Article 101466"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142928661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Did the COVID-19 pandemic change the importance of health for life satisfaction? Evidence from France","authors":"Philippe Tessier , François-Charles Wolff","doi":"10.1016/j.ehb.2025.101468","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ehb.2025.101468","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>COVID-19 has brought health protection to the top of the political agenda in many countries, at the cost of reduced freedoms, social relationships, and economic opportunities. This context may have led individuals to pay more attention to their health and to attach greater importance to it in life satisfaction. This paper examines the possibility of an increase in the correlation between life and health satisfaction after the onset of the pandemic using repeated cross-sectional data in France between 2016 and 2021 and an original jittering strategy to smooth the ordinal variables of life and health satisfaction in regression models of subjective well-being. The estimates show an increased correlation between health and life satisfaction for women aged 50 and over, but no change for men. However, the increase in correlation observed for older women disappears by the second half of 2021. These results are robust to several sensitivity analyses and lead to the conclusion that the COVID-19 pandemic did not significantly and permanently change the importance of personal health for life satisfaction.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50554,"journal":{"name":"Economics & Human Biology","volume":"56 ","pages":"Article 101468"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142973126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chengkui Liu , Feirong Ren , Liuyi Yang , Wei Fan , Xiongcai Huang
{"title":"Cognitive or non-cognitive? The effect of maternal dominance on adolescent human capital: Evidence from adolescents' educational decisions","authors":"Chengkui Liu , Feirong Ren , Liuyi Yang , Wei Fan , Xiongcai Huang","doi":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101463","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101463","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using data from the 2014 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), this study finds that when mothers hold dominant positions in their children's educational decisions, they are more likely to adopt a \"tiger mom\" approach. This dynamic explains why maternal dominance in educational decisions significantly enhances adolescents' cognitive abilities while hindering their non-cognitive skills. We propose time investment, material investment, and parenting styles as channel variables that offer a more comprehensive explanation. It is clear that as mothers have the decision-making authority in children's education, parents allocate more time to daily care and homework tutoring and provide additional extracurricular learning resources for adolescents, ultimately enhancing their cognitive abilities. Meanwhile, parents tend to be more demanding. Conversely, the mothers' dominance in the children's educational decisions results in reduced investment in leisure time, with no statistically significant effects on parents' responsiveness and activities related to talent development, mental growth, and parent-child bonding. The above three mechanisms indicate that when mothers hold dominant positions in their children's educational decisions, they are more likely to adopt a \"tiger mom\" approach to fostering their children's human capital development. These findings partially explain the negative effect on adolescents' non-cognitive abilities. In conclusion, these findings underscore the critical role of the tiger mom in shaping adolescents' cognitive and non-cognitive abilities. Efforts should be made to promote the holistic development of adolescents' cognitive and non-cognitive abilities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50554,"journal":{"name":"Economics & Human Biology","volume":"56 ","pages":"Article 101463"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143155404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Educational burden reduction, educational inequality, and enrollment pressure: Evidence from China","authors":"Hua Liu , Kaixuan Zhang , Lin Wang , Jiwei Chen","doi":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101459","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101459","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>With the introduction of a series of educational burden reduction policies in recent years, it has become a major concern for governments and society whether these policies can alleviate students’ academic burden. This paper constructs an educational burden reduction policy index and evaluates the impact of the “30 Articles on Educational Burden Reduction (the AEBR)” implemented in 2018 on students’ academic burden and physical and mental health. The results show that the AEBR significantly increases the daily sleep duration of primary and secondary school students, but has no significant effects on students’ academic burden and mental health, indicating that the implementation of the AEBR is ineffective. Furthermore, we find that the AEBR widens the gap between household educational expenditure, indicating that the implementation of the AEBR increases educational inequality. Finally, we demonstrate that prolonged and widespread enrollment pressure has significantly undermined the effectiveness of the implementation of the AEBR.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50554,"journal":{"name":"Economics & Human Biology","volume":"56 ","pages":"Article 101459"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142824776","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Migrant well-being in Australia: Does locus of control matter?","authors":"Anita Staneva, Andreas Chai","doi":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101447","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101447","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Using rich longitudinal data from Australia, we investigate the mental health impacts and behaviours of migration resettlement in Australia, focusing on age, gender and locus of control as possible modifiers. We find that age profiles in mental health differ significantly between migrant and native populations. Our analysis of second-generation migrants supports the ‘healthy migrant paradox’, suggesting favourable mental health outcomes. Additionally, we show that immigrants with an internal locus of control exhibit a lower likelihood of mental health issues, which suggests that an internal locus of control amplifies the beneficial effects in the case of mental health outcomes for immigrant populations.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50554,"journal":{"name":"Economics & Human Biology","volume":"56 ","pages":"Article 101447"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142755889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shattered ground, shaken minds: Mental health consequences of earthquakes","authors":"Andika Ridha Ayu Perdana , Judit Vall Castelló","doi":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101448","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.ehb.2024.101448","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite growing recognition of the importance of mental health status for the achievement of the global development goals, substantial challenges persist in addressing this issue in both developed and developing countries. The literature has pointed to a variety of conditions as triggers for mental health problems, including exposure to unexpected natural disasters. Contributing to the literature, our study quantifies the mental health consequences of the devastating 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake in Indonesia. We combine the Modified Mercalli Intensity from the United States Geological Survey with individual-level data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey to assess the impacts on municipalities with varying earthquake intensities. Employing a difference-in-differences approach, we identify a significant and persistent deterioration in the mental health condition for individuals in municipalities with stronger earthquake severity. To explore the mechanisms underlying this impact, we analyze the roles of family casualties, physical health declines, and socio-economic disruptions, identifying family loss and worsened physical health as particularly influential factors driving the observed mental health outcomes.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50554,"journal":{"name":"Economics & Human Biology","volume":"56 ","pages":"Article 101448"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2024-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142758750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}