title: Education, mental health, and education-labor market misfit.
abstract: Higher-educated people experience enhanced mental health. We ponder whether the mental health benefits of educational attainment are limitless. At the individual level, we look at the impact of job-education mismatch. At the societal level, we hypothesize that diminishing economic returns on education limit its mental health benefits. Using a subsample of individuals aged 20 to 65 years (N = 28,288) from 21 countries in the European Social Survey (ESS 2006), we estimate the impact on depressive symptoms of characteristics at both the employee level (years of education and job-education mismatch) and the labor market/country level (the gap between the nontertiary and tertiary educated in terms of unemployment risks and earnings). The results show that educational attainment produces mental health benefits in most European countries. However, in some of the countries, these benefits are limited or even completely eliminated by education-labor market misfit.
authors.affiliation: HeDeRa (Health and Demographic Research), Department of Sociology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium Piet.Bracke@UGent.be.
authors.forename: Piet
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bracke
authors.affiliation: HeDeRa (Health and Demographic Research), Department of Sociology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Vera
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: van de Straat
authors.affiliation: HeDeRa (Health and Demographic Research), Department of Sociology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium Research Foundation (FWO), Flanders, Belgium.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Missinne
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003625:Data Collection; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology / Q000523:psychology*; D004522:Educational Status; D004651:Employment / Q000145:classification / Q000191:economics / Q000523:psychology*; D005060:Europe / Q000453:epidemiology; D005062:European Union; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D008297:Male; D017533:Marital Status; D008603:Mental Health; D008875:Middle Aged; D012937:Social Mobility; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: comparative research; cross-national; education; mental health; social epidemiology