Does a college education reduce depressive symptoms in American young adults?

Abstract

Higher levels of educational attainment are consistently associated with better mental health. Whether this association represents an effect of education on mental health, however, is less clear as omitted variable bias remains a pressing concern with education potentially serving as a proxy for unobserved factors including family background and genetics. To combat this threat and come closer to a causal estimate of the effect of education on depressive symptoms, this study uses data on 231 monozygotic twin pairs from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and employs a twin-pair difference-in-difference design to account for both unobserved shared factors between twin pairs (e.g. home, school, and neighborhood environment throughout childhood) and a number of observed non-shared but theoretically relevant factors (e.g. cognitive ability, personality characteristics, adolescent health). We find an inverse association between possessing a college degree and depressive symptoms in both conventional and difference-in-difference models. Results of this study also highlight the potentially overlooked role of personality characteristics in the education and mental health literature.

Is Current Depressive Symptoms Associated with the Perception of Poor Neighborhood Quality in Childhood? A Population-based Study

“…Thirdly, the interaction effect of education on the relationship between childhood neighborhood qualities was not found in this study. This is counter to most previous studies [37,51]. The reason may be explained by: previous study was examined among young adulthood [37], while our study was conduct among old adult.…”

“…This is counter to most previous studies [37,51]. The reason may be explained by: previous study was examined among young adulthood [37], while our study was conduct among old adult. Due to no chance or low chance to get high education before 1977s in China, more than 91.44% of participant graduated from primary school or below.…”

“…However, none of them was conducted among older adults, and whether gender difference is signi cant in association between elderly depressive symptoms and neighborhood quality during childhood is still unclear. Besides, education was been proved as an important factor related to depressive symptoms in previous studies [37]. In light of the growing enthusiasm for education as a policy lever to improve population health, whether the association between childhood neighborhood and depressive symptoms was moderate with different education level is need of further examination.…”

Socio-economic predictors of depressive symptoms around old age retirement in Swedish women and men

“…Being married was associated with lower odds of membership in a trajectory group with higher depression score. The result that higher educational level was associated with higher depression scores contradicts a large body of research in general populations indicating the opposite (Erickson et al, 2016;Lorant et al, 2003;McFarland & Wagner, 2015;Miech & Shanahan, 2000;Peyrot et al, 2015). Some studies have, however, not been able to confirm such an association (Inaba et al, 2005), and it has been pointed out that results vary depending on for example region and the way depression is measured (Lorant et al, 2003).…”

Does education protect against depression? Evidence from the Young Finns Study using Mendelian randomization

“…The twin design accounts for shared family background and confounding genetic factors, which may otherwise cause omitted variable bias. Based on twin data, McFarland and Wagner (2015) and Mezuk et al (2013) found that higher education was related to lower levels of depressive symptoms. Fujiwara and Kawachi (2009), who also use twin design, however, did not find such a relationship.…”