Learning intensity effects in students’ mental and physical health – Evidence from a large scale natural experiment in Germany

Hofmann, Sarah; Mühlenweg, Andrea M.

doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.10.001

Cited by 23 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 54 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…There is a strong and robust correlation with the sub-component of mental health of workers. Apparently, robot adoption does not affect the vitality, social functioning nor emotional state of an individual, but their "(mental) work ability" (as termed by Hofmann and Mühlenweg (2018)). Accordingly, more robots are strongly related to higher mental work ability impairment, leading to lower (potential) productivity at work either by doing less than wanted and/or or lower quality work, which could have further, unintended consequences the employing company, since it is directly affected by their employees work productivity.…”

Section: Automation and Worries About The Economic Situation Of Indivmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Are They Coming for Us? Industrial Robots and the Mental Health of Workers

Abeliansky

Beulmann

2019

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We investigate how an increase in the robot intensity (the ratio of industrial robots over employment) affects the self-reported mental health of workers in Germany. To do so, we combine individual mental health data from the German Socioeconomic Panel with the deliveries of robots to 21 German manufacturing sectors provided by the International Federation of Robotics for the period 2002-2014 (every two years). Controlling for a range of individual and sectoral characteristics, and employing individual-, time-and sectoral fixed effects, we find that an increase in robot intensity of 10% is associated with an average decrease of 0.59% of the average mental health standard deviation. This suggests that in a fast automating sector (i.e. rubber and plastics), where the robot intensity increased by approximately 2000%, mental health would have decreased by 118% of one standard deviation. This effect seems to be driven by job security fears of individuals working in noninteractive jobs and the fear of a decline in an individual's economic situation. Moreover, further sample divisions into low, middle and high occupational groups shows that the negative effects are affecting mostly the middle-level occupational group. Splitting the sample according to different age groups shows that the mental health of younger workers is the most vulnerable to an increase in automation. Results are also robust to instrumenting the stock of robots, and to different changes in the sample.

show abstract

Section: Automation and Worries About The Economic Situation Of Indivmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Adapted from Hofmann and Mühlenweg (2018), who define the Mental Health subcategory as "(mental) work ability". Robust standard errors in parentheses, * p < 0.1, ** p < 0.05 and *** p < 0.01.…”

Section: A Appendixmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are They Coming for Us? Industrial Robots and the Mental Health of Workers

Abeliansky

Beulmann

2019

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Although we do not find an effect of the compulsory schooling reforms on several health measures, it does not mean that education generally has no effect. The examined compulsory schooling reforms were implemented a long time ago and therefore, we cannot tell anything about health effects of more recent education reforms such as the so-called G8 reform in Germany that exposed students to increased learning intensity [76]. Future research should proceed examining the causal effect of education on health, health behaviours and mortality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does compulsory schooling affect health? Evidence from ambulatory claims data

Begerow

Jürges

2021

Eur J Health Econ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Using claims data on more than 23 million statutorily insured, we investigate the causal effect of schooling on health in the largest and most comprehensive analysis for Germany to date. In a regression discontinuity approach, we exploit changes in compulsory schooling in West Germany to estimate the reduced form effect of the reforms on health, measured by doctor diagnoses in ICD-10 format covering physical as well as mental health conditions. To mitigate the problem that empirical results depend on subjective decisions made by the researcher, we perform specification curve analyses to assess the robustness of findings across various model specifications. We find that the reforms have, at best, very small impacts on the examined doctor diagnoses. In most of the specifications we estimate insignificant effects that are close to zero and often of the “wrong” sign. Therefore, our study questions the presence of the large positive effects of education on health that are found in the previous literature.

show abstract

“…This is reflected in the increases in specialist care, which are driven by the same medical conditions related to the increase in GP visits. There is a small increase in admissions due to endocrine diseases (column 3), diseases of the respiratory system (column 7), the digestive system (column 8), diseases of the skin and subcutaneous tissue (column 9), diseases of the genitourinary system (column 11), 31 and obstetric related admissions (column 12). Finally, column 15 shows an increase in conditions coded as ICD10 R or Z; these are the most prevalent reasons for the use of specialist care, and represent medical examinations and screenings.…”

Section: Changes In Health And/or Behaviors? Diagnoses Related To Gp Visits and Use Of Specialist Carementioning

confidence: 99%