https://hdl.handle.net/2123/23764 2026-06-04T20:17:40Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/35338 Factors associated with intentions to seek face-to-face and online supports among Chinese-heritage university students in Australia with mental health concerns Wang, Beibei; Glozier, Nicholas; Choi, Isabella Chinese-heritage students in Australian universities tend to underuse both face-to-face and online mental health services. This study aimed to explore the associations between mental health knowledge, different types of stigmas, and intentions to seek help from online and face-to-face sources for psychological problems among Chinese-heritage students. Chinese-heritage students (N = 268) recruited from three Australian universities completed an online cross-sectional survey. Over 70 % self-reported current mental ill-health and 89 % had previously sought help for their condition. Overall, there were high intentions to seek help from online (71.3 %) and face-to-face (85.1 %) sources, with a clear preference for face-to-face support. Multivariate analyses revealed that international student status, longer residence in Australia, and greater mental health knowledge were associated with higher intentions to seek help from online and face-to-face sources; and younger age was additionally associated with intentions to seek help from online sources. The results suggested that, among help-seeking Chinese-heritage students with poor mental health, being an international student and residing longer in Australia were associated with higher intentions to seek help. Strategies to promote help-seeking among Chinese-heritage students in Australia should therefore focus on supporting newly arrived students, as well as improving mental health knowledge. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/34862 Implementing lifestyle interventions in mental health care: third report of the Lancet Psychiatry Physical Health Commission Milton, Alyssa The physical health disparities experienced by people who live with mental illness are well documented. This population group has cardiometabolic risks and diseases at rates 1·4–2·0 times higher than people without mental illness, and physical health conditions are responsible for 70% of the deaths of people with severe mental illness. They are the major drivers of the 13–15 year reduction in life expectancy that is found in individuals with mental illness, compared with those without mental illness. The 2019 The Lancet Psychiatry Commission: a blueprint for protecting physical health in people with mental illness brought these disparities into focus and provided guidance for health promotion, multiprofessional clinical care, and future research. Lifestyle risk factors, such as high smoking rates, low physical activity, high levels of sedentary behaviour, low cardiorespiratory fitness, lower diet quality, detrimental eating behaviour, and poor sleep hygiene, are prevalent in this population. Lifestyle interventions that target these risk factors are effective adjunctive therapies in people living with mental illness, alleviating mental health symptoms while protecting physical health and promoting wellbeing. Given the established benefits of lifestyle interventions in mental health settings, there is a need to shift the focus from efficacy towards implementation research and address how best to implement and deliver lifestyle interventions as core clinical practice. Implementation should include a recognition of the social and economic context in which behavioural risk factors emerge to ensure equity of outcomes. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/33672 Factors influencing the adoption of pre-commitment devices for online gambling Stratton, Elizabeth Deposit limits are a voluntary pre-commitment device that allow gambling customers to pre-select the amount of money they want to be able to deposit into their gambling accounts, representing an external aid to self-control. This study aimed to investigate attitudes towards and use of deposit limits along with perceived barriers and motivators to use among regular online gambling customers using the Theory of Planned Behaviour as a framework. An online survey was completed by 299 participants [84.3% male; M age=48.85] years recruited through an Australian online wagering operator. Results showed that positive attitudes and perceptions of social norms was related to deposit limit use and that not knowing what limit to set was a significant barrier to use, thus supporting the Theory of Planned Behaviour as a relevant framework. Additional barriers to use included perceptions that individuals could manage their own betting, that deposit limits were for people with gambling problems, not wanting to change or have their gambling constrained, and not knowing what limit to set. Motivators included concerns that individuals might be betting too much and wanting to limit their spend. This specific exploration of barriers and motivators to use deposit limits will enable strategies to be developed to enhance voluntary uptake and meaningful engagement among a broader group of gambling customers. 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/33651 A mentally healthy framework to guide employers and policy makers Glozier, Nick Mobile health (mHealth) apps have the potential to expand access to evidence-based interventions for mental health conditions, including depression. HeadGear was developed to prevent depression and improve well-being among the working population and was associated with significant positive effects in an efficacy trial. This study presents the results from a naturalistic trial intended to evaluate real-world usage of the app. We examined the naturalistic use of HeadGear between March 2019 and March 2022, using app analytic data, in-app event data, and surveys assessing depressive symptoms, well-being, and work performance repeated at 30-day intervals over 5-month app usage. During the observation period, HeadGear was widely disseminated to the public, and downloaded 26,455 times. Of those who downloaded the app, 12,995 completed baseline. The mean age of users was 38.23 (SD = 12.39) and 60% were women. Approximately one in four met criteria for probable depression at baseline. Depressive symptoms showed consistent improvement at all time points (Cohen’s d ranging from 0.24 at 1 month to 0.13 at 5 months). A similar pattern emerged for well-being. Work performance showed improvement to 2-month follow-up only. The strongest change was found for those with greater symptom severity at baseline, and those with high app engagement. Attrition at follow-up points was high. Findings regarding the real-world use of HeadGear are promising and highlight the use of such apps among those with higher symptom severity (despite the intended use of the app as a prevention tool). Further work is required to tailor mHealth apps to reach their full potential through an enhanced understanding of the utility of individual features for effectiveness and engagement. 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/33472 The role of human involvement and support in digital mental health interventions for people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders: a critical review Arnautovska, Urskaa; Milton, Alyssa; Trott, Mike; Soole, Rebecca; Siskind, Dan Purpose of review: Schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SDD) are characterised by a complex array of psychosis symptoms, and typically require ongoing and long-term support including pharmacological and non-pharmacological management. Digital mental health interventions (DMHIs) have been suggested as a novel therapeutic approach to enable low cost, scalable improvements in quality of care for adults living with SSD. However, the types and role of human involvement and support within DMHIs is currently unknown. Recent findings: Several recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses have investigated the potential efficacy of DMHIs for people with SSD, with scant yet emerging systematic evidence on the effects of human support within DMHIs on mental health outcomes. Further, several recent individual studies examined the efficacy of DMHIs with human support among people with SSD and provided valuable insights into the potential active ingredients of such support on outcomes relevant to this population. Summary: The current critical review provides the first narrative synthesis of available evidence to guide clinicians and intervention develops in designing DMHIs with adequate human support that may enhance long-term outcomes of people living with SSD. 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/32348 The relationship of shift work disorder with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress Chang, Melinda J.; Vidafar, Parisa; Birk, Jeffrey L.; Shechter, Ari Shift workers commonly suffer from disturbed sleep, which is known to affect mental health in other populations. Shift work disorder (SWD) is characterized by complaints of insomnia and/or excessive daytime sleepiness temporally associated with working non-standard schedules that occur during the usual time for sleep. Few studies have explored the extent to which workers with vs. without SWD experience worse mental health. We administered the Shift Work Disorder Screening Questionnaire to 60 adults engaged in various shift work schedules to categorize workers as being at high or low risk for SWD. Mental health outcomes were measured using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21). Linear regression was performed for each DASS-21 subscale, adjusting for age, sex, shift type, sleep duration, and frequency of alcohol use. Most participants (55 %) were at high risk for SWD. High-risk participants had higher depressive symptoms than low-risk participants, B = 3.59, 95 % CI [0.54, 6.65], p = .02. The estimated value for those at high risk for SWD corresponded to clinically significant mild depressive symptoms, (M = 13.43), compared to those at low risk, (M = 9.84). High risk for SWD was marginally associated with increased stress symptoms, B = 2.48, 95 % CI [−0.06,5.02], p = .06. Our findings add to the body of evidence that SWD is associated with poor mental health outcomes. Providing interventions specific to the sleep impacts of SWD, including tailored cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, may improve shift workers’ mental health. 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/32347 Choosers Adapt Value Coding to the Environment, But Do Not Attain Efficiency Kurtz-David, Vered; Alladi, Vinayak; Bucher, Stefan; Brandenburger, Adam; Louie, Kenway; Glimcher, Paul; Tymula, Agnieszka We investigate how human choosers adapt their value encoding strategy to the statistics of the choice environment. Specifically, we ask whether the human value encoding mechanism exhibits divisive normalization only in the Pareto-distributed environments in which it is information-maximizing. To test this theory, we conduct a risky choice experiment in which subjects are presented with blocks of choice stimuli drawn from either a Pareto-distributed environment or a uniform-distributed environment. Our results show that subjects exhibit some degree of normalization regardless of whether it is efficient or not, but do adapt the curvature of their encoding function to the environment. These findings suggest that human value coding mechanisms are flexible but biologically constrained to be perfectly efficient only in specific environments. This study provides new insights into the neural mechanism of human decision-making and the role of environmental statistics in shaping it. 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/32346 Predictive modelling of deliberate self-harm and suicide attempts in young people accessing primary care: a machine learning analysis of a longitudinal study McHugh, Catherine M.; Ho, Nicholas; Iorfino, Frank; Crouse, Jacob J.; Nichles, Alissa; Zmicerevska, Natalia; Scott, Elizabeth; Glozier, Nick; Hickie, Ian B. Purpose Machine learning (ML) has shown promise in modelling future self-harm but is yet to be applied to key questions facing clinical services. In a cohort of young people accessing primary mental health care, this study aimed to establish (1) the performance of models predicting deliberate self-harm (DSH) compared to suicide attempt (SA), (2) the performance of models predicting new-onset or repeat behaviour, and (3) the relative importance of factors predicting these outcomes. Methods 802 young people aged 12–25 years attending primary mental health services had detailed social and clinical assessments at baseline and 509 completed 12-month follow-up. Four ML algorithms, as well as logistic regression, were applied to build four distinct models. Results The mean performance of models predicting SA (AUC: 0.82) performed better than the models predicting DSH (AUC: 0.72), with mean positive predictive values (PPV) approximately twice that of the prevalence (SA prevalence 14%, PPV: 0.32, DSH prevalence 22%, PPV: 0.40). All ML models outperformed standard logistic regression. The most frequently selected variable in both models was a history of DSH via cutting. Conclusion History of DSH and clinical symptoms of common mental disorders, rather than social and demographic factors, were the most important variables in modelling future behaviour. The performance of models predicting outcomes in key sub-cohorts, those with new-onset or repetition of DSH or SA during follow-up, was poor. These findings may indicate that the performance of models of future DSH or SA may depend on knowledge of the individual’s recent history of either behaviour. 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/32345 Expected subjective value theory (ESVT): A representation of decision under risk and certainty. Glimcher, Paul W.; Tymula, Agnieszka A. We present a descriptive model of choice derived from neuroscientific models of efficient value representation in the brain. Our basic model, a special case of Expected Utility Theory, can capture a number of behaviors predicted by Prospect Theory. It achieves this with only two parameters: a time-indexed “payoff expectation”(reference point) and a free parameter we call “predisposition”. A simple extension of the model outside the domain of Expected Utility also captures the Allais Paradox. Our models shed new light on the computational origins and evolution of risk attitudes and aversion to outcomes below reward expectation (reference point). It delivers novel explanations of the endowment effect, the observed heterogeneity in probability weighting functions, and the Allais Paradox, all with fewer parameters and higher descriptive accuracy than Prospect Theory. 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/32344 Work-related psychosocial and physical paths to future musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) Glozier, Nick; Morris, Richard W. Given the human, industrial and societal costs of Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) we evaluated antecedents to MSDs (assessed as pain, doctor diagnosis, and workplace injury) over a six-year period T1 (2014/2015) and T2 (2020/2021). The purpose of the study was to examine the role of the organisational climate (i.e., psychosocial safety climate, PSC) for employees’ psychological health and safety as an antecedent to physical demands, and psychosocial risks (e.g., low control, harassment) that in turn might relate to MSDs using a longitudinal design. We used matched data from follow-up telephone interviews of 432 Australian employees. We found evidence for several psychosocial paths; PSC was related to future workplace injuries through decision authority; PSC was related to MSD pain through depressive symptoms. For future doctor diagnosed MSDs, PSC was directly nega-tively related. Older age, being male and low income was related to work injury; being female associated with MSD pain; and being older was associated with MSD diagnosis. A novel finding was the linkage between psy-chosocial risks (low skill discretion and harassment) and future physical demands leading to future MSD pain and work injury highlighting a new pathway linking psychosocial and physical aspects. Overall poor PSC was found as a distal antecedent of all MSDs. Decision authority and skill discretion were most critical psychosocial risks in predicting future pain and injuries. Psychosocial factors predicted future demands. Actions should target improving PSC and autonomy and reducing harassment and physical demands, to decrease the incidence of MSDs. 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/32343 Distress and career regret in doctors: are we really that different to other professions? Glozier, Nicholas Health departments should support the professional training they require and show that their employees are valued 2023-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/29750 Continuity of mental health care during the transition from prison to the community following brief periods of imprisonment Browne, Christie; Korobanova, Daria; Chemjong, Prabin; Harris, Anthony W.F.; Glozier, Nick; Basson, John; Spencer, Sarah-Jane; Dean, Kimberlie Purpose: The prison-to-community transition period is one of high risk and need, particularly for those with mental illness. Some individuals cycle in and out of prison for short periods with little opportunity for mental health stabilization or service planning either in prison or the community. This study describes the socio-demographic, clinical and criminal justice characteristics of individuals with mental illness and frequent, brief periods of imprisonment, examines continuity of mental health care between prison and the community for this group, and reports on their post-release mental health and criminal justice outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: This study examined a sample of 275 men who had recently entered prison in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, who had been charged with relatively minor offenses and had been identified on reception screening as having significant mental health needs. Baseline demographic and mental health information was collected via interview and file review and contacts with the prison mental health service were recorded for the period of incarceration. Follow-up interviews were conducted 3 months post-release to determine level of health service contact and mental health symptoms. Information on criminal justice contact during the 3 month period was also collected. Findings: The majority (85.5%) of the sample had contact with a mental health professional during their period of incarceration. Mental health discharge planning was, however, lacking, with only one in 20 receiving a referral to a community mental health team (CMHT) and one in eight being referred for any kind of mental health follow-up on release. Of those followed up 3 months post-release (n = 113), 14.2% had had contact with a CMHT. Of those released for at least 3 months (n = 255), one in three had received new charges in this period and one in five had been reincarcerated. Conclusion: Continuity of mental health care for those exiting prison is poor, particularly for those with mental health needs experiencing brief periods of imprisonment, and rates of CMHT contact are low in the immediate post-release period. These findings suggest a need for early identification of individuals in this group for timely commencement of intervention and release planning, and opportunities for diversion from prison should be utilized where possible. 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/29749 What happened to the predicted COVID-19-induced suicide epidemic, and why? Glozier, Nick; Morris, Richard; Schurer, Stefanie Two years ago, in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were widespread and grim predictions of an ensuing suicide epidemic. Not only has this not happened but also by the end of 2021 in the majority of countries and regions with available data, the suicide rates had, if anything, declined. We discuss four reasons why the predictions of suicide models were exaggerated: (1) government intervention reduced the economic and mental costs of lockdowns, (2) the pandemic itself and lockdowns had less of an effect on mental health than assumed, (3) the evidence for a link between economic downturns, distress and suicide is weaker and less consistent than the models assumed and (4) predicting suicide is generally hard. Predictive models have an important place, but their strong modelling assumptions need to acknowledge the inherent high degree of uncertainty which has been further augmented by behavioural responses of pandemic management. 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/29745 Disentangling what works best for whom in comorbidity Glozier, Nick; Vidafar, Parisa This short commentary article reviews Mason EC, Grierson AB, Sie A, et al. Co-occurring insomnia and anxiety: A randomized controlled trial of internet CBT for insomnia vs. internet CBT for anxiety. Sleep. 2022 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/27926 Present bias for monetary and dietary rewards Cheung, Stephen L.; Tymula, Agnieszka; Wang, Xueting Economists model self-control problems through time-inconsistent preferences. Empirical tests of these preferences largely rely on experimental elicitation using monetary rewards, with several recent studies failing to find present bias for money. In this paper, we compare estimates of present bias for money with estimates for healthy and unhealthy foods. In a within-subjects longitudinal experiment with 697 low-income Chinese high school students, we find strong present bias for both money and food, and that individual measures of present bias are moderately correlated across reward types. Our experimental measures of time preferences over both money and foods predict field behaviors including alcohol consumption and academic performance. 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/27918 Parents’ Responses to Teacher Qualifications Chang, Stephen; Cobb-Clark, Deborah A.; Salamanca, Nicolas We identify the causal effect of children being assigned to more highly qualified teachers on their parents’ investments. Exploiting a unique setting in which teachers are randomly assigned to classes, we show that parents respond to more qualified teachers by increasing their children's private tutoring. A potential mechanism is an increase in parents’ belief that achievement is driven by student effort—for which tutoring is instrumental. Teacher qualifications are unrelated to test scores, however. Instead, they weaken students’ beliefs that effort is important for achievement, suggesting that private tutoring may have a demotivating effect on students. We conclude that family-wide behavioral reactions are important in educational production. 2022-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/27627 The Australian Twins Economic Preferences Survey Kettlewell, Nathan; Tymula, Agnieszka This article describes the Australian Twins Economic Preferences Survey (ATEPS). The data set comprises a wide variety of preference and behavioral measures (risk aversion, impatience, ambiguity aversion, trust, confidence) elicited using incentivized decision tasks. One-thousand one-hundred twenty Australian adult twins (560 pairs) completed the survey, making it one of the largest data sets containing incentivized preference measures of twins. As the survey was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also collected information on experiences related to the pandemic, along with a variety of questions on political attitudes and mental wellbeing. We hope that ATEPS can make a valuable contribution to social science and genetics research. 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26786 Does education strengthen the life skills of adolescents? Schurer, Stefanie Life skills, sometimes referred to as noncognitive skills or personality traits (e.g. conscientiousness or locus of control—the belief to influence events and their outcomes), affect labor market productivity. Policy makers and academics are thus exploring whether such skills should be taught at the high school or college level. A small portfolio of recent studies shows encouraging evidence that education could strengthen life skills in adolescence. However, as no uniform approach exists on which life skills are most important and how to best measure them, many important questions must be answered before life skill development can become an integral part of school curricula. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26785 Lifecycle patterns in the socioeconomic gradient of risk preferences Schurer, Stefanie We investigate which socioeconomic groups are most likely to change their risk preferences over the lifecourse using data from a nationally representative German survey and methods to separate age from cohort and period effects. Tolerance to risk drops by 0.5 SD across all socioeconomic groups from late adolescence up to age 45. From age 45 socioeconomic gradients emerge – risk tolerance continues to drop for the most disadvantaged and stabilizes for all other groups – and reach a maximum of 0.5 SD by age 65. These results matter because increased levels of risk aversion are associated with imprudent financial decisions in the event of crises. 2015-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26784 The stability of personality traits in adolescence and young adulthood Elkins, Rosemary K; Kassenboehmer, Sonja C; Schurer, Stefanie Models of economic decision-making usually assume that personality is stable over time. We assess the validity of this assumption over an eight-year time frame in adolescence and young adulthood using nationally representative panel data from Australia. Our study shows that unconditional mean-level changes in personality traits are small—with the exception of conscientiousness which increases by 0.38 SD—because most individuals do not change their scores in a statistically reliable way during adolescence and young adulthood, or changes occur in equal proportions in opposite directions. Controlling for systematic panel attrition and multiple hypothesis testing, we demonstrate that personality traits do not systematically respond to the majority of common one-off family-, income-, and health-related shocks. However, a small number of life events—marriage, family members detained in jail, leaving the workforce and long-term health problems—are associated with subsequent changes in personality. In particular, youth who experience long-term health problems including bodily pain increase their external locus of control by 0.5–0.9 SD, an economically meaningful change when expressed in terms of hourly wage penalty. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26783 University education and non-cognitive skill development Kassenboehmer, Sonja C; Leung, Felix; Schurer, Stefanie We examine the effect of university education on students’ non-cognitive skills (NCS) using high-quality Australian longitudinal data. To isolate the skill-building effects of tertiary education, we follow the education decisions and NCS—proxied by the Big Five personality traits—of 575 adolescents over eight years. Estimating a standard skill production function, we demonstrate a robust positive relationship between university education and extraversion, and agreeableness for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The effects are likely to operate through exposure to university life rather than through degree-specific curricula or university-specific teaching quality. As extraversion and agreeableness are associated with socially beneficial behaviours, we propose that university education may have important non-market returns. 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26782 Understanding the mechanisms through which adverse childhood experiences affect lifetime economic outcomes Schurer, Stefanie; Trajkovski, Kristian; Hariharan, Tara Over the past two decades, researchers have shown a growing interest in the role of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) – children's confrontation with maltreatment and household dysfunction – in shaping health outcomes. This is the first study to quantify the economic penalties of ACEs and identify the mechanisms which produce the relationship. We source data from the National Child Development Study to construct an ACE index based on prospective childhood information. We estimate a robust earnings penalty of 9% for each additional ACE, a 25% higher probability of being welfare dependent, and a 27% higher probability of subjective poverty at age 55, over and above the influence of childhood socioeconomic disadvantage. The income penalty of ACEs is mainly produced by parental neglect, a component of the ACE index based on teacher assessments. It is observed for children from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Observed differences in later-life earnings between children with and without neglect exposure can be almost fully explained by observable differences in human capital accumulated by the beginning of mid-age. The productivity loss in an economy due to parental neglect is likely to be high. Our findings contribute to a wider discussion on the multidimensionality of childhood poverty. 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26781 Exploring the role of parental engagement in non-cognitive skill development over the lifecourse Elkins, Rosemary; Schurer, Stefanie We examine the role that parental engagement with child’s education plays in the lifecourse dynamics of locus of control (LOC), one of the most widely studied non-cognitive skills related to economic decision-making. We focus on parental engagement as previous studies have shown that it is malleable, easy to measure, and often available for fathers, whose inputs are notably understudied in the received literature. We estimate a standard skill production function using rich British cohort data. Parental engagement is measured with information provided at age 10 by the teacher on whether the father or the mother is very interested in the child’s education. We deal with the potential endogeneity in parental engagement by employing an added-value model, using lagged measures of LOC as a proxy for innate endowments and unmeasured inputs. We find that fathers’, but not mothers’, engagement leads to internality, a belief associated with positive lifetime outcomes, in both young adulthood and middle age for female and socioeconomically disadvantaged cohort members. Fathers’ engagement also increases the probability of lifelong internality and fully protects against lifelong externality. Our findings highlight that fathers play a pivotal role in the skill production process over the lifecourse. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26780 Inequality in personality over the life cycle Gensowski, Miriam; Gørtz, Mette; Schurer, Stefanie We document gender and socioeconomic inequalities in personality over the life cycle (age 18–75), using the Big Five 2 (BFI-2) inventory linked to administrative data on a large Danish population. We estimate life-cycle profiles non-parametrically and adjust for cohort and sample-selection effects. We find that: (1) Women of all ages score more highly than men on all personality traits, including three that are positively associated with wages; (2) High-education groups score more favorably on Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism than low-education groups, while there is no socioeconomic inequality by Conscientiousness; (3) Over the life cycle, gender and socioeconomic gaps remain constant, with two exceptions: the gender and SES gaps in Openness to Experience widen, while gender differences in Neuroticism, a trait associated with worse outcomes, diminish with age. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of gender wage gaps, household production models, and optimal taxation. 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26779 Gender differences in the lifecycle benefits of compulsory schooling policies de New, Sonja C.; Schurer, Stefanie; Sulzmaier, Dominique We estimate the lifecycle benefits of policies that raise the minimum school leaving age (MSLA). Using a difference-in-differences method, we estimate the causal impact of two adjacent Australian state reforms that extended the MSLA from 14 to 15 in mid 1960. Important gender and state differences emerge in how the reforms affected secondary and postsecondary education outcomes. The biggest winners were women in Victoria, for whom the reform increased postsecondary education, while the reform lifted only minimum schooling qualifications in South Australia. As a consequence, the Victorian reform improved the lifecycle capital accumulation process especially for women, while few benefits were observed for South Australians. Victorian women entered higher-skilled occupations, were more likely to own homes, to be still married and satisfied with family life in pre-retirement age. Victorian men also gained, but the gains were limited to better cognitive and non-cognitive skills, health, and satisfaction with (family) life. Yet, all groups benefitted from delayed and reduced fertility, and a happier family life. We conclude that raising education levels for individuals at the lower end of the education spectrum produces lifecycle benefits that exceed market-return considerations, but major benefits occur only if the reform impacts education outcomes beyond minimum schooling. 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26413 Context-dependency in valuation Tymula, Agnieszka; Plassmann, Hilke In the last few years, work in the nascent field of neuroeconomics has advanced understanding of the brain systems involved in value-based decision making. An important modulator of valuation processes is the specific context a decision maker is facing during choice. Recently, neuroeconomics has made great progress in understanding, on both the brain and behavioral level, how context-dependent perception affects valuation and choice. Here we describe how context-sensitive value coding accounts for choice set effects, differential perceptions of gains and losses, and expectancy effects of external (economic) signals. 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26412 An experimental study of adolescent behavior under peer observation: Adolescents are more impatient and inconsistent, not more risk-taking, when observed by peers Tymula, Agnieszka The majority of deaths in adolescence have been attributed to “risky” behaviors (Eaton et al., 2012) and therefore could be avoided had the adolescent made a different decision. In this paper, using two laboratory experiments we assess the impact of peer observation (a possible culprit of bad decision-making in adolescence) on the behavior of adolescents in risky conditions. We carefully separate risk attitudes from impatience, present bias, ambiguity attitudes, and inconsistency and in contradiction to what has been suggested in developmental psychology, we find that adolescents’ risk and ambiguity attitudes are not affected by observation. Instead, when observed by peers, adolescents become more impatient and inconsistent. 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26405 Reducing Internet Gambling Harms Using Behavioral Science: A Stakeholder Framework Gainsbury, Sally M; Black, Nicola; Blaszczynski, Alex; Callaghan, Sascha; Clancey, Garner; Starcevic, Vladan; Tymula, Agnieszka Internet gambling provides a unique environment with design mechanics and data-driven opportunities that can impact gambling-related harms. Some elements of Internet gambling including isolation, lack of interruption, and constant, easy access have been argued to pose specific risks. However, identifiable player accounts enable identification of behavioral risk markers and personalized private interfaces to push customized messages and interventions. The structural design of the Internet gambling environment (website or app) can have a strong influence on individual behavior. However, unlike land-based venues, Internet gambling has few specific policies outlining acceptable and unacceptable design practices. Harm minimization including responsible gambling frameworks typically include roles and responsibilities for multiple stakeholders including individual users, industry operators, government regulators, and community organizations. This paper presents a framework for how behavioral science principles can inform appropriate stakeholder actions to minimize Internet gambling-related harms. A customer journey through internet gambling demonstrates how a multidisciplinary nexus of collaborative effort may facilitate a reduction in harms associated with Internet gambling for consumers at all stages of risk. Collaborative efforts between stakeholders could result in the implementation of appropriate design strategies to assist individuals to make decisions and engage in healthy, sustainable behaviors. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26380 Young adults gamble less when observed by peers Tymula, Agnieszka; Whitehair, Jackson The impact of peer presence on the choices made by young people is yet to be fully understood. Using an incentive compatible experiment, we investigate whether: (1) young people’s willingness to accept known and unknown risks varies when in the presence of an observer of the similar age compared to in private and (2) whether these preferences are affected by having observed peer’s decisions. We find that young adults do not gamble more when observed by peers, rather they become more ambiguity averse. 2018-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26375 Economic Rationality in Youth With Emerging Mood Disorders Weinrabe, Angé; Chung, Hui-Kuan; Tymula, Agnieszka; Tran, James; Hickie, Ian B. Cognitive difficulties are common in persons experiencing anxiety or mood disorders. In this article, we explore the economic concept of rational decision-making in young people with emerging mood disorders by using incentive-compatible experiments involving choices over consumer products. At 2 time points, separated by 6–8 weeks, we measured irrational decision-making (defined as violations of the Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preference) concurrently with levels of anxiety and depression levels using the 10-item Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10); the 17-item Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomology, Adolescent Version (QIDS-A17); and the 12-item Somatic and Psychological Health Report (SPHERE-12) in 30 participants (mean age 19.22 years, 19 male) attending a youth mental health clinic. In total, 15 (50%) participants rated high on all three psychological questionnaires combined, scoring “severely” depressed (QIDS-A17 ≥ 16), “severely” anxious (K10 ≥ 30), and “Level 1 (Type 1)” (SPHERE-12). In Session 2, taking attrition into account, we estimated that of our returning 25 patients, 11 (44%) participants continued to rate high on all three psychological scores. We found that the degree of economic irrationality was higher in young people with more severe mood disorder symptoms (anxiety measured by K10, Pearson’s correlation r = .406, p = .026). These results may have implications for both characterization and treatment of common mood disorders in young people. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26336 Recurring pain, mental health problems and sick leave in Australia Lallukka, Tea; Hiilamo, Aapo; Wooden, Mark; Glozier, Nick; Marshall, Nathaniel; Milner, Allison; Butterworth, Peter A substantial proportion of Australians report recurring pain and mental health problems, but their separate and joint contributions to sick leave use has not been examined. This study examines the interaction of pain and mental health problems with sick leave usage and the extent to which unobservable time-invariant factors contribute to these conditions and the propensity to take sick leave. Longitudinal data on self-reported paid sick leave days, pain, mental health problems and multiple covariates, and spanning the period 2005 to 2019, were derived from the Household, Income, and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. The analysis included 3404 and 3448 employed women and men, respectively, with paid sick leave entitlements, with an average of 6 observations each. Negative binomial regression models were used to investigate the association while adjusting for multiple covariates. After multiple adjustments, recurring pain was linked to 1.7 additional sick leave days per year among women and 2.3 among men, whereas the corresponding figures for recurring mental health problems were 1.5 and 0.7, respectively. Further adjustment for time-constant within-individual heterogeneity slightly attenuated these estimates, suggesting that unobserved characteristics contribute to both symptoms and a higher propensity to take sick leave. Pain and mental health problems – single-occasion but particularly recurring – are both important contributors to sick leave days in Australia. However, their effects do not appear to interact with one another. Thus, to help the employees continue working, mental health problems and pain have to be tackled early on, aiming to reduce any stigma related to them. Moreover, modification in working conditions could be useful in finding better matches between employees and their jobs, provided that the employer is aware of the mental health problems and pain of their employees. 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26335 The Effect of Quarantining Welfare on School Attendance in Indigenous Communities Cobb-Clark, Deborah; Kettlewell, Nathan; Schurer, Stefanie; Silburn, Sven We identify the causal impact of quarantining welfare payments on Aboriginal children’s school attendance by exploiting exogenous variation in its rollout across communities. We find that income quarantining reduced attendance by 4.7 percent on average in the first five months. Attendance eventually returned to its initial level, but never improved. The attendance penalty does not operate through changes in student enrollments, geographic mobility, or other policy initiatives. Instead, we demonstrate that financial disruption may be responsible for the temporary reduction in school attendance. Supplemental analysis suggests that the policy rollout may have increased family discord. 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26245 Parenting Style as an Investment in Human Development Cobb-Clark, Deborah; Salamanca, Nicolas; Zhu, Anna We propose a household production function approach to human development that explicitly considers the role of parenting style in child rearing. Specifically, parenting style is modelled as an investment that depends not only on inputs of time and market goods, but also on attention. Our model relates socioeconomic disadvantage to parenting style and human development through the constraints that disadvantage places on cognitive capacity. We find empirical support for key features of our model. Parenting style is a construct that is distinctive to standard parental investments and is important for young-adult outcomes. Effective parenting styles are negatively correlated with disadvantage. 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26227 The Impact of Paid Parental Leave on Fertility Intentions Bassford, Micaela; Fisher, Hayley Paid parental leave is an important part of family policy in OECD countries. Australia's Paid Parental Leave (PPL) scheme was introduced in 2011 and provides 18 weeks of leave paid at the full time minimum wage for the primary carer of a child. We estimate the effect of access to paid parental leave on women's fertility intentions by exploiting the differential impact of the scheme for women working in the public and private sectors. We find that the scheme's announcement had no impact on fertility intentions at the extensive margin but that, conditional on intending to have at least one (more) child, the number of children intended increases by 0.34, a 16% increase. This effect is concentrated among highly educated women. As it has been shown that fertility intentions predict fertility outcomes, these results suggest that even modest paid parental leave programs can increase the fertility of working women and so moderate the declines in fertility rates seen in many developed countries. 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26175 Locus of control and internal migration Caliendo, Marco; Cobb-Clark, Deborah; Hennecke, Juliane; Uhlendorff, Arne We model migration across domestic labor markets (internal migration) as the outcome of a job search process in which job seekers form subjective beliefs about the return search effort that are related to their locus of control. Job seekers with an internal locus of control are predicted to search across larger geographic areas and migrate more frequently as a result. We empirically test the relationship between locus of control and the propensity to migrate using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). We find that not only do individuals with an internal locus of control express more willingness to migrate, they do in fact also migrate more often. 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26174 The reciprocal relationship between depressive symptoms and employment status Bubonya, Melisa; Cobb-Clark, Deborah; Ribar, David This paper analyzes the reciprocal lagged relationship between depressive symptoms and employment status. We find that severe depressive symptoms contribute to a 25.6% increase in subsequent non-employment rates, a 20.7% increase in non-participation rates and 34.2% increase in unemployment rates, for men. Similar, although weaker, marginal effects are found for women. However, we find no evidence for men and only limited evidence for women that unemployment, non-employment, or non-participation raises the risks of severe depressive symptoms. We observe an impact of labor market status on depressive symptoms only when using point-in-time measures. 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26172 Mental health and productivity at work: Does what you do matter? Bubonya, Melisa; Cobb-Clark, Deborah; Wooden, Mark Much of the economic cost of mental illness stems from workers’ reduced productivity. Using nationally representative panel data we analyze the links between mental health and two alternative workplace productivity measures – absenteeism and presenteeism (i.e., lower productivity while attending work) – explicitly allowing these relationships to be moderated by the nature of the job itself. We find that absence rates are approximately five percent higher among workers who report being in poor mental health. Moreover, job conditions are related to both presenteeism and absenteeism even after accounting for workers’ self-reported mental health status. Job conditions are relatively more important in understanding diminished productivity at work if workers are in good rather than poor mental health. The effects of job complexity and stress on absenteeism do not depend on workers’ mental health, while job security and control moderate the effect of mental illness on absence days. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26171 Childhood homelessness and adult employment: the role of education, incarceration, and welfare receipt Cobb-Clark, Deborah; Zhu, Anna This paper examines the long-run employment consequences of experiencing homelessness in childhood rather than later in life. We use novel panel data that link survey and administrative data for a sample of disadvantaged adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Our estimation approach pays particular attention to the potential pathways linking childhood homelessness to adult employment. We find that those experiencing homelessness for the first time as children are less likely to be employed. For women, this relationship is largely explained by the lower educational attainment and higher welfare receipt (both in general and in the form of mental illness-related disability payments) of those experiencing childhood homelessness. Higher rates of high school incompletion and incarceration explain some of the link between childhood homelessness and men’s employment; however, childhood homelessness continues to have a substantial direct effect on male employment rates. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26107 Lives saved during economic downturns: Evidence from Australia Atalay, Kadir; Edwards, Rebecca; Schurer, Stefanie; Ubilava, David Worldwide, countries have been restricting work and social activities to counter the emerging public health crisis due to the coronavirus pandemic. These measures have caused dramatic increases in unemployment. Some commentators argue that the "draconian measures" will do more harm than good due to the economic contraction, despite a large literature that finds mortality rates decline during recessions. We estimate the relationship between unemployment, a proxy for economic climate, and mortality in Australia, a country with universal health care. Using administrative time-series data on mortality by state, age, sex, and cause of death for 1979-2017, we find no relationship between unemployment and mortality on average. However, we observe beneficial health effects in economic downturns for young men, associated with a reduction in transport accidents. Our estimates imply 431 fewer deaths in 2020 if unemployment rates double as forecast. For the early 1980s, we find a procyclical pattern in infant mortality rates. However, this pattern disappears starting from the mid-1980s, coincident with the 1984 implementation of universal health care. Our results suggest that universal health care may insulate individuals from the health effects of macroeconomic fluctuations. 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/25994 Risk preference dynamics around life events Kettlewell, Nathan Using a panel of Australians I estimate the dynamic relationship between common life events and risk preferences. Changes in financial circumstances, parenthood and family loss predict changes in risk preferences. Importantly the effects are largest closer to the event date and disappear over time. This supports a model of preference formation where risk preferences are (trend) stable but fluctuations are at least partly deterministic. The linkages between life events and risk preferences are explored. There is little evidence that changes in consumption, state dependence, or changes in mental health and mood explain the results. However, emotional stability is an in influential moderator suggesting that emotions play an important role. 2019-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/25993 Do personality traits affect productivity? Evidence from the lab Cubel, Maria; Nuevo‐Chiquero, Ana; Sanchez-Pages, Santiago; Vidal-Fernandez, Marian While survey data supports a strong relationship between personality and labour market outcomes, the exact mechanisms behind this association remain unexplored. We take advantage of a controlled laboratory set‐up to explore whether this relationship operates through productivity. Using a real‐effort task, we analyse the impact of the Big Five personality traits on performance. We find that more neurotic subjects perform worse, and that more conscientious individuals perform better. These findings suggest that at least part of the effect of personality on labour market outcomes operates through productivity. In addition, we find evidence that gender and university major affect this relationship. 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/25854 The Bilingual Gap in Children’s Language, Emotional and Pro-social Development Cobb-Clark, Deborah A.; Harmon, Colm; Staneva, Anita In this paper we examine whether – conditional on other family inputs – bilingual children achieve different outcomes in language and emotional development. Our data come from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) which allows us to analyze children's language and emotional development in depth. We relax the usual assumption that the production function underpinning child development is not itself a function of the age of the child and estimate the bilingual gap in children's language and emotional development as a cumulative process that depends on current and past endowments of cognitive and non-cognitive capacity. We find that the language development of bilingual children is not significantly different to that of their monolingual peers; however, there is evidence of a positive effect of bilingualism on emotional development. 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/25853 Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste: Opportunities to Reduce Social Disadvantage from COVID-19 Cobb-Clark, Deborah A.; Baxter, Janeen; Cornish, Alexander; Ho, Tiffany; Kalb, Guyonne; Mazerolle, Lorraine; Parsell, Cameron; Pawson, Hal; De Silva, Lihini; Zubrick, Stephen This paper identifies and examines a range of policy reform opportunities in Australia arising from COVID-19. The authors demonstrate how COVID-19 presents unique opportunities for rethinking and redesigning long-standing rules and regulations covering how people live and work in Australia, with some opportunities arising coincidentally and others requiring purposeful policy and institutional redesign. They present a broad range of ideas to address entrenched disadvantage in health, labour markets, the tax and transfer system, gender equality, education, housing and criminal justice in Australia, in order to leverage the COVID-19 crisis to build a better society. 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z https://hdl.handle.net/2123/24149 Pathways of Disadvantage: Unpacking the Intergenerational Correlation in Welfare Bubonya, Melisa; Cobb-Clark, Deborah A. Our goal is to investigate the pathways that link welfare receipt across generations. We undertake a mediation analysis in which we not only calculate the intergenerational correlation in welfare, but also quantify the portion of that correlation that operates through key mechanisms. Our data come from administrative welfare records for young people (aged 23–26) and their parents over nearly two decades which have been linked to survey responses from young people at age 18. The mediators we consider jointly explain nearly a third (32.2 percent) of the intergenerational correlation in welfare receipt. The primary mechanism linking welfare receipt across generations is the failure to complete high school. Adolescents in welfare-reliant families experience more disruptions in their schooling (e.g., school changes and residential mobility, expulsions and suspensions) and receive less financial support from their families both of which impact on their chances of completing high school and avoiding the welfare roll. Young people’s risk-taking behavior (smoking, illicit drug use, delinquency and pregnancy) is also a key mechanism underpinning intergenerational welfare reliance. Physical and mental health, work-welfare attitudes and academic achievement, in contrast, have a more modest role in transmitting welfare receipt across generations. 2021-01-01T00:00:00Z