IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iae/iaewps/wp2023n03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The kids are not alright: differential trends in mental ill-health in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Ferdi Botha

    (Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, The University of Melbourne)

  • Richard W. Morris

    (Central Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney; School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, University of Sydney)

  • Peter Butterworth

    (Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic & Social Research, The University of Melbourne; National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, The Australian National University)

  • Nick Glozier

    (Central Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney)

Abstract

Given the observed deterioration in mental health among Australians over the past decade, this study investigates to what extent this differs in people born in different decades – i.e., possible cohort differences in the mental health of Australians. Using 20 years of data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, we find strong evidence that cohort effects are driving the increase in population level mental ill-health. Deteriorating mental health is particularly pronounced among people born in the 1990s and seen to a lesser extent among the 1980s cohort. There is little evidence that mental health is worsening with age for people born prior to the 1980s. The findings from this study highlight that it is the poorer mental health of Millennials that is driving the apparent deterioration in population-level mental health. Understanding the context and changes in society that have differentially affected younger people may inform efforts to ameliorate this trend and prevent it continuing for emerging cohorts.

Suggested Citation

  • Ferdi Botha & Richard W. Morris & Peter Butterworth & Nick Glozier, 2023. "The kids are not alright: differential trends in mental ill-health in Australia," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2023n03, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne.
    • Handle: RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2023n03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/4465349/wp2023n03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2023n03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sheri Carnegie (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mimelau.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.