Economics Seminar（2014-29）

Topic:The Long-term Impact of an Early Career Recession on Health and Health-Related Behaviors

Speaker:GuoNaijia

Affiliation: The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Time:Tuesday, 16 December. 14:00-15:30pm

Location:Room 217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract：

Using data from the restricted-access National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, we estimate the long-term impact of an early career recession on various health outcomes and health-related behaviors up to age 30 for different education groups. The early career recession is measured by the unemployment rate of the residence state in the year when the individual enters labor market upon receiving the highest degree. Because the timing of labor market entry could potentially be affected by economic conditions, we instrument the unemployment rate when entering labor market using the unemployment rates of the residence states at age 18 and age 22. Our main finding is that an early career recession has an adverse impact on both health outcomes and health behaviors and education plays a protective role to reduce such adverse impact. In particular, an early career recession increases the probability of bad health status and depression for high school graduates, but has no effect on college graduates. We also find that a higher unemployment rate at early career significantly increases adverse health behaviors such as smoking, heavy drinking, and illicit drug use, and the effects are much larger in magnitude among high school graduates. In addition, college graduates and high school graduates respond differently in time use: college graduates increase hours of sleep but high school graduates increase hours of watching TV and reduce exercise.

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