Mental Health Patterns and Consequences: Results from Survey Data in Five Developing Countries

The social and economic consequences of poor mental health inthe developing world are presumed to be significant, yet remainunderresearched. This study uses data from nationally representativesurveys in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, and Mexico andfrom special surveys in India and Tonga to show similar patternsof association between mental health and socioeconomic characteristics.Individuals who are older, female, widowed, and report poorphysical health are more likely to report worse mental health.Individuals living with others with poor mental health are alsosignificantly more likely to report worse mental health themselves.In contrast, there is little observed relation between mentalhealth and consumption poverty or education, two common measuresof socioeconomic status. Indeed, the results here suggest insteadthat economic and multidimensional shocks, such as illness orcrisis, can have a greater impact on mental health than poverty.This may have important implications for social protection policy.Also significant, the associations between poor mental healthand lower labor force participation (especially for women) andmore frequent visits to health centers suggest that poor mentalhealth can have economic consequences for households and thehealth system. Mental health modules could usefully be addedto multipurpose household surveys in developing countries. Finally,measures of mental health appear distinct from general subjectivemeasures of welfare such as happiness.     

The Impact of Financial Crises on Labor Markets, Household Incomes, and Poverty: A Review of Evidence

The 1990s have witnessed several financial crises, of whichthe East Asia and Mexico tequila crises are perhaps the mostwell known. What impact have these crises had on labor markets,household incomes, and poverty? Total employment fell by muchless than production declines and even increased in some cases.However, these aggregates mask considerable churning in employmentacross sectors, employment status, and location. Economies thatexperienced the sharpest currency depreciations suffered thedeepest cuts in real wages, though deeper cuts in real wagesrelative to GDP were associated with smaller rises in unemployment.To some extent, families smoothed their incomes through increasedlabor force participation and private transfers, though thelimited evidence available suggests that wealthier familieswere better able to smooth consumption. The initial impact ofthe crises was on the urban corporate sector, but rural householdswere affected as well and in some instances suffered deeperlosses than did urban families. School enrollment declined,especially among poorer families, as did use of health facilities,but he impact on children's nutrition levels appears to vary.Crises have typically proved short-lived, but whether householdsplunged into poverty during a crisis are able to recover asthe economy does remains an open question.      

The Many Dimensions of Child Poverty: Evidence from the UK Millennium Cohort Study*

In this paper, we use a multidimensional framework to characterise child poverty in the UK. We examine the interdependencies amongst the different dimensions of multidimensional poverty and the relationship between multidimensional poverty and income poverty. We also explore the links between multidimensional poverty, income poverty and children's cognitive and non‐cognitive development. Our findings suggest that multidimensional poverty identifies many but not all of the same children classified using standard income poverty measures. Approximately 20 per cent of children are classified as poor on one measure but not the other. Children in workless households and ethnic minority children face the highest odds of growing up in both multidimensional poverty and income poverty. We find similar levels of persistence in multidimensional poverty and income poverty, with 17 per cent (18 per cent) of children experiencing persistent multidimensional (income) poverty and 10 per cent of children experiencing both persistent multidimensional poverty and persistent income poverty. Multidimensional poverty (both episodic and persistent) also has a detrimental impact on children's development over and above the negative impact of income poverty.     

Who Gets What From Employer Pay or Play Mandates?

Critics of pay or play mandates, borrowing from the large empirical minimum wage literature, argue that they reduce employment. Borrowing from a smaller empirical minimum wage literature, we argue that they also are a blunt instrument for funding health insurance for the working poor. The vast majority of those who benefit from pay or play mandates, which require employers to either provide appropriate health insurance for their workers or pay a flat per hour tax to offset the cost of health care live in families with incomes twice the poverty line or more, and depending on how coverage is determined, the mandate will leave a significant share of the working poor ineligible for such benefits either because their hourly wage rate is too high or they work for smaller exempt firms.     

Exploring household financial strain dynamics

Rising energy and food prices are causing living standards to fall across Europe and straining household budgets. The longer-term outlook for households is unclear as the dynamics of financial strain are not well understood. We address four important research questions on financial strain dynamics by applying a dynamic random coefficients probit model with duration and occurrence dependence to De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) Household Survey panel data. We find no evidence that households become habituated or sensitised to financial strain over time unlike in studies of responses to stress. Entry into household financial strain is less likely when the household can cope by increasing earnings from work or by borrowing from family and friends but not by the economically inactive entering employment. Our third result is that the persistence of financial strain can be explained by a mutually-enforcing negative cycle through worse health but not through marital conflict or more short-sighted and risk averse decision-making. Finally, we find that neither income or wealth shocks affect financial strain in contrast to other studies. Further research into understanding the experience of financial hardship is warranted in the light of the economic challenges caused by the current cost of living crisis.     

Bank Mergers and Crime: The Real and Social Effects of Credit Market Competition

Using a unique sample of commercial loans and mergers between large banks, we provide micro‐level (within‐county) evidence linking credit conditions to economic development and find a spillover effect on crime. Neighborhoods that experience more bank mergers are subject to higher interest rates, diminished local construction, lower prices, an influx of poorer households, and higher property crime in subsequent years. The elasticity of property crime with respect to merger‐induced banking concentration is 0.18. We show that these results are not likely due to reverse causation, and confirm the central findings using state branching deregulation to instrument for bank competition.     

The Effect of Removing Geographic Restrictions on Banking in the United States: Lessons for Europe*

In this paper the author argues that cross‐border, intra‐European bank mergers are likely to generate benefits similar to those enjoyed in the United States when interstate banking restrictions were removed. These benefits include greater banking efficiency, higher economic and employment growth, more entrepreneurial activity, and reduced economic volatility.     

The Economics of a Reduction in VAT*

We explore the effects of a temporary cut in VAT, identifying three possible effects: an income effect as people benefit from a lower cost of living during the period of the reduction, a substitution effect as people bring their consumption forward and an arbitrage effect as people buy non‐perishable goods before the end of the period of low VAT for consumption after the VAT rate has been raised. International evidence suggests a clear overall impact on consumption, although the nature of the pattern depends on the way in which the data are analysed. However, the key policy issue is the impact of the VAT change on output and, to examine that, a simulation model of the whole economy is needed. Evidence from the National Institute's Global Economic Model suggests that the impact of the recent VAT reduction is likely to build up during the course of 2009. The reduction in VAT from 17½ per cent to 15 per cent is likely to result in consumption being augmented by less than 1 per cent by the fourth quarter of 2009. However, GDP is likely to be raised by less than half a per cent relative to what would have happened without the VAT increase. After the temporary reduction is over, both consumption and GDP are depressed as a result of the policy.     

Where is globalization taking us? : Why we need a new ‘Bretton Woods’

While globalization brings global increases in income in the aggregate, it also threatens to leave much of humankind in conditions of absolute poverty and to widen the gap between rich and poor. These trends are likely to be accentuated with the advent of the information/knowledge economy, the increasing power of multinationals, and the growing severity of environmental constraints. This article sketches these trends and then addresses the question: what are the necessary conditions for the attainment of a growing global economy with equity and acceptable environmental standards? It then tackles the issue of the prospects for these conditions to be realized under the prevailing global economic/financial system.     

Measuring the Cost‐Effectiveness of an R&D Tax Credit for the UK

This paper investigates the economic impact of the government's proposed new UK R&D tax credit. We measure the benefit of the credit by the effect on value added in the short and long runs. This is simulated from existing econometric estimates of the tax‐price elasticity of research and development (R&D) and the effect of R&D on productivity. For the latter, we allow R&D to have an effect on technology transfer (catching up with the technological frontier) as well as innovation (pushing the frontier forward). We then compare the increase in value added to the likely exchequer costs of the programme under a number of scenarios. In the long run, the increase in GDP far outweighs the costs of the tax credit. The short‐run effect is far smaller, with value added only exceeding cost if R&D grows at or below the rate of inflation.     

Achieving the United Nations' sustainable development goals through financial inclusion: A systematic literature review of access to finance across the globe

Access to credit may have a direct effect on achieving United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in ending poverty, improving health and education, and reducing inequality. In this paper, we systematically review the growing empirical evidence on whether individuals' demographic characteristics (such as gender and race) and socio-economic features (such as income and education) effect their ability in accessing credit. Our survey covers peer-reviewed articles providing empirical evidence, using quantitative and qualitative data, published between 2000 and 2020 (February). We find that having more education and/or being more financially literate increases households' and entrepreneurs' access to credit. Individuals with lower income and less wealth are less likely to obtain credit from the mainstream financial institutions. In emerging countries, women are more likely to be rejected and deprived from formal credit, and pay higher cost. Non-Whites, ethnic minorities, disabled people and immigrants are also more likely to be excluded from the formal credit markets. We find that abovementioned credit deprived segments of the society resort to fringe finance providers, such as pay-day lenders or pawnbrokers, with higher costs. These findings are remarkably similar across developed and developing countries. Finally, we provide direction for further research in achieving SDGs through financial inclusion and access to credit by highlighting various shortcomings of the existing literature and empirical evidence.     

Who Receives Medicaid in Old Age? Rules and Reality

Medicaid is a government programme that also provides health insurance to the elderly who have few assets and either low income or catastrophic health care expenses. We ask how the Medicaid rules map into the reality of Medicaid recipiency, and we ask what other observable characteristics are important to determine who ends up on Medicaid. The data show that both singles and couples with high retirement income can end up on Medicaid at very advanced ages. We find that, conditioning on a large number of observable characteristics, including those that directly relate to Medicaid eligibility criteria, single women are more likely to end up on Medicaid – so are non‐white people, but, surprisingly, their higher recipiency is concentrated in the higher income percentiles. We also find that people with low incomes who have a high‐school diploma or higher degree are much less likely to end up receiving Medicaid than their less‐educated counterparts. All of these effects are large and depend on retirement income in a very non‐linear way.     

Evidence on the Relationship between Low Income and Poor Health: Is the Government Doing Enough?

The government's report, Opportunity for All: Tackling Poverty and Social Exclusion (Department of Social Security, 1999), identified poor health as one of the major problems associated with low income. However, much of the available evidence on the relationship between income and health is of little help in forming policies to reduce health inequalities, as it has tended to be based on cross‐section surveys and is therefore unable to shed much light on causal effects. Here, we make use of two British longitudinal datasets to examine the longer‐term influences of income on health within a life‐course perspective. We then use the results of our analysis to provide a brief critical assessment of the likely success of the government's anti‐poverty strategy in reducing health inequalities. A more detailed assessment of government policy in this respect can be found in Benzeval et al. (forthcoming).     

Labor Rights,Venture Capital,and Firm Performance

We investigate the role of labor unions in the performance of venture capital (VC)‐backed firms. Using a large sample of initial public offering firms from 1983 to 2013, we find that VC‐backed firms in highly unionized industries have lower Tobin's Q and are less likely to survive. This effect is robust to endogeneity concerns and to controlling for industry and firm characteristics. The findings suggest that strong labor rights impede innovative firms’ performance and survival, thereby adversely affecting innovation, economic growth, and employment.     

The future of India’s economic growth: the natural resources and energy dimension

The continuation of widespread poverty apart, the biggest danger that India faces is the wanton destruction and degradation of all the country’s natural resources and a growing, unsustainable, dependence on the use of hydrocarbon fuels. We are losing ten percent of our GDP as a result of the damage to and degradation of our natural resources. But environmental decision-making has not yet been merged with mainstream economic decision making. In the developed countries, environmental protection followed a path defined by the Environmental Kuznets curve, involving significant increases in income and pollution levels to a point where the trend changed. A developing country like India cannot pursue the same path, and would need to set up a governance structure and policy regime that allow the turning point to take place at substantially lower levels of income. The internalization of social and environmental externalities would ensure that resources are used in a sustainable and responsible manner. In the matter of energy use, for instance, proactive policies—such as stress on renewable sources and the rationalisation of subsidies—are needed to decrease the dependence on unsustainable imports and to create the conditions under which the dispossessed and poor sections of society are able to meet their basic energy needs. Blindly aping the consumerist approach of the developed world, and neglecting the ecological footprint of lifestyles, could prove disastrous for our populous country.     

Audit committee characteristics and firm performance during the global financial crisis

We address the question ‘do governance enhancing audit committee (AC) characteristics mitigate the firm performance impact of significant‐adverse‐economic events such as the Global Financial Crisis (GFC)?’ Our analysis reveals that smaller audit committees with more experience and financial expertise are more likely to be associated with positive firm performance in the market. We also find that longer serving chairs of audit committees negatively impacts accounting performance. However, accounting performance is positively impacted where ACs include blockholder representation, the chair of the board, whose members have more external directorships and whose chair has more years of managerial experience. We contribute to the growing body of research on the impact of audit committee governance attributes on performance during times of financial distress.     

Regret in health insurance post‐purchase behavior

Unlike other forms of insurance, individuals with health insurance generally expect to make claims through the policy period. Selecting an appropriate level of cost‐sharing is difficult and individuals may, ex‐post, regret the choice of a less‐than‐suitable coverage amount. Using a national health insurance survey of private market consumers from 2013 to 2017, we evaluate the potential for post‐purchase regret in the health plan purchasing decision. We employ an ordered logistic model and find that consumers whose plan choices were likely financially dominated by a foregone alternative are significantly more likely to express regret through reporting significantly lower likelihood of renewal, even when controlling for confounding considerations including affordability, self‐assessed risk, and satisfaction with the plan.     

县域金融发展与多维贫困减缓——基于湖南省51个贫困县的实证研究

运用结构方程模型,考量县域金融、经济增长与收入分配对多维贫困减缓的影响路径.结果显示:县域金融发展对多维贫困减缓的直接作用与间接作用同时存在,且直接作用强于间接作用;经济增长效应强于收入分配效应;对消费贫困的影响大于医疗贫困与教育贫困.因此,应提高贫困县域基础设施与公共服务水平,加快县域金融体制改革步伐,创新县域金融服务产品与模式,加速推进贫困地区县域经济增长方式的转变,以此促进县域金融发展,减缓多维贫困.     

Competition leverage: how the demand side affects optimal risk adjustment

We study optimal risk adjustment in imperfectly competitive health insurance markets when high‐risk consumers are less likely to switch insurer than low‐risk consumers. Insurers then have an incentive to select even if risk adjustment perfectly corrects for cost differences. To achieve first best, risk adjustment should overcompensate insurers for serving high‐risk agents. Second, we identify a trade‐off between efficiency and consumer welfare. Reducing the difference in risk adjustment subsidies increases consumer welfare by leveraging competition from the elastic low‐risk market to the less elastic high‐risk market. Third, mandatory pooling can increase consumer surplus further, at the cost of efficiency.     

Disparities Old and New in US Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic*

The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced well-being and economic security on a number of dimensions, likely worsening mental health. In this paper, we assess how mental health in the US population has changed during the pandemic. We use three large, nationally representative survey sources to provide a picture of mental health prior to and during the pandemic. We find dramatic but broad-based declines in the level of mental health from pre-pandemic baseline measures across both people and places. Rates of poor mental health have jumped roughly 25 percentage points, from a base of roughly one-third. We document substantial disparities in mental health but show that the pandemic has generally preserved, rather than widened, these. Significant worsening in relative mental health among Hispanics and respondents aged 30 and older are exceptions. Consistent with an important role for pandemic-specific shocks, We find that income loss, food insecurity, COVID-19 infection or death in one's close circle, and personal health symptoms are all associated with substantially worse mental health. If anything, the decline in mental health is worsening as the pandemic wears on and is becoming less related to local COVID-19 case rates.