How Assuring is Insurance? The Effects of Unemployment Insurance on Mental Health in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Public Deposited
Analytics

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
Request Version for Screen Reader
Last Modified
  • April 9, 2022
Creator
  • Javvadi, Keshav
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Economics
Abstract
  • This paper studies the effects of unemployment insurance benefits on mental health in the United States during the pandemic and explores heterogeneity in these effects across demographics. The negative effects of the pandemic on mental health across the country have been widely discussed both anecdotally and academically. With multiple federal supplementary UI programs implemented during the pandemic, this paper aims to analyze the impact that these programs and UI benefits in general may have had on mental health, as well as the general effect of UI on mental health. By primarily using repeated cross-sectional data from the Household Pulse Survey, along with state level COVID-19 and UI data, this paper employs a difference in differences model and an OLS fixed effects model. We find significant evidence to suggest that unemployment insurance benefits play an important role in decreasing psychological distress that results from expected and actual income loss, and these effects vary based on socioeconomic and demographic factors.
Date of publication
DOI
Resource type
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Peter, Klara
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Economics
Degree
  • Bachelor of Science
Graduation year
  • 2022
Language
  • English

Relations

Parents:

This work has no parents.

In Collection:

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details FINAL_Javvadi_Thesis_PDF.pdf 2022-04-09 Public Download