Youth unemployment and mental health: dominance approach. Evidence from Poland

Martyna Kobus (Institute of Economics of Polish Academy of Sciences) and Marcin Jakubek (Instytut Nauk Ekonomicznych PAN) present evidence on the relationship between mental health and unemployment among Polish youth. The literature establishes links between mental health and unemployment, but the evidence concerning youths is scarce. We utilize 2010/2011 World Mental Health Survey that contains detailed information on the prevalence of psychiatric diseases and mental disorders in Poland. We compare health distributions in terms of both inequality and welfare relying on methods for ordinal data developed recently. We find that youth employed generally have better health status than youth unemployed, but the differences are very small when it comes to more detailed questions concerning mood (i.e. sadness, anxiety, anger). To observe substantial differences between two populations, one needs to ask even more detailed questions concerning personal feelings. Clear differences, however, emerge for social interactions and undertaking own initiative. Here employed present unambiguously better than unemployed.