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Measuring resilience to major life events

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  • Etilé, Fabrice
  • Frijters, Paul
  • Johnston, David W.
  • Shields, Michael A.

Abstract

There is great interest in understanding who in the population is resilient in the face of major life events, and who is not. In this paper we construct a revealed measure of adulthood psychological resilience by modelling individuals’ responses to ten adverse life events using a dynamic finite mixture regression model applied to 17 years of panel data. Our methodology accounts for non-random selection into events, and differences between individuals in anticipation, immediate response, and speed of adaptation. We find considerable heterogeneity in individuals’ responses to events such as major financial shocks, redundancy and bereavement. We also find that our measure of resilience is correlated with clinical measures of mental health, and that it significantly predicts the psychological response to out-of-sample events. The strongest predictor of our measure of resilience is internal locus of control, which is an individual's belief that life outcomes are under their control.

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  • Etilé, Fabrice & Frijters, Paul & Johnston, David W. & Shields, Michael A., 2021. "Measuring resilience to major life events," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112526, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:112526
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    Cited by:

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    2. Stöckel, Jannis & van Exel, Job & Brouwer, Werner B.F., 2023. "Adaptation in life satisfaction and self-assessed health to disability - Evidence from the UK," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 328(C).
    3. Budría, Santiago & Betancourt-Odio, Alejandro & Wirth, Eszter, 2023. "Does Internal Locus of Control Get You Out of Homelessness?," IZA Discussion Papers 16242, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Budría, Santiago & Betancourt-Odio, Alejandro & Wirth, Eszter, 2023. "Does internal locus of control get you out of homelessness?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    5. Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell, 2022. "Local area crime and energy poverty," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    6. Botha, Ferdi & Dahmann, Sarah C., 2022. "Locus of Control, Self-Control, and Health Outcomes," IZA Discussion Papers 15306, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell, 2022. "Locus of control and the mental health effects of local area crime," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 301(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    major life events; mixture model; panel data; psychological health; resilience;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • C20 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - General
    • C50 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - General

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