Brown bag seminar Hermien Dijk - Do mental health problems cause problematic debt?
| When: | Th 21-11-2019 12:00 - 13:00 |
| Where: | De Skibril, Duisenberg |
Hermien Dijk - Do mental health problems cause problematic debt?
Abstract:
A large number of individuals struggle with problematic debts, which can have far-reaching consequences for debtors, creditors and society as a whole. Unfortunately, current prevention programs generally lack effectiveness and problematic debt and its causes have remained understudied. We investigate whether there is a causal effect of mental health problems on the onset of individual problematic debt. For this purpose we use administrative microdata of all individuals in the Netherlands containing records of health insurance debt and mental healthcare use. In order to account for reverse causality and omitted variable bias we perform instrumental variable analysis using life events happening to adult children as an instrument for mental health problems. Additionally, we perform a separate analysis where we use sibling fixed effects on a sub-sample of
individuals aged under 25. The results of this research will provide insight in whether mental health interventions might be a valuable strategy for the prevention of problematic debt, as well as potential indirect savings of mental healthcare.