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Spend More, Feel Better? Investigating the impact of social policy expenditure on the severity of individual depressive symptoms throughout Europe

Eger-Beyeler, Ari LU (2023) WPMM43 20231
Department of Political Science
Abstract
Depression has recently been highlighted across OECD countries as a public health crisis in need of immediate action. Unfortunately, the most popularized public policy solutions focus on individual biomedical or psychosocial interventions. This thesis draws from a theory on economic determinants of mental health to explore if within-country increases in social protection policy expenditure levels over time can affect individuals' depressive symptom outcomes. We use cross-sectional panel data across three rounds of the European Social Survey and state-level social protection expenditure data from the OECD Social Expenditure database for 16 countries across three years (2006/12/14). We operationalize 8 survey questions from the ESS panel... (More)
Depression has recently been highlighted across OECD countries as a public health crisis in need of immediate action. Unfortunately, the most popularized public policy solutions focus on individual biomedical or psychosocial interventions. This thesis draws from a theory on economic determinants of mental health to explore if within-country increases in social protection policy expenditure levels over time can affect individuals' depressive symptom outcomes. We use cross-sectional panel data across three rounds of the European Social Survey and state-level social protection expenditure data from the OECD Social Expenditure database for 16 countries across three years (2006/12/14). We operationalize 8 survey questions from the ESS panel data into a depression score for three different sample populations (N’s = 30064, 21309, & 91859). We interact the depression score with country-level social protection expenditure data in 14 fixed effects regressions. Results show that increases in the expenditure level of a majority of state-level social policy programs have a small inverse relationship with individuals’ depressive symptom outcomes within the countries we have observed. Thus, within-country increases in social protection expenditure levels have a mitigating effect on individual-level depressive symptoms within that country's population. (Less)
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author
Eger-Beyeler, Ari LU
supervisor
organization
course
WPMM43 20231
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
Mental Health, Depressive Symptoms, Social Policy Expenditure, Fixed-Effects Regression Model, European Social Survey
language
English
id
9115266
date added to LUP
2023-08-27 16:31:43
date last changed
2023-08-27 16:31:43
@misc{9115266,
  abstract     = {{Depression has recently been highlighted across OECD countries as a public health crisis in need of immediate action. Unfortunately, the most popularized public policy solutions focus on individual biomedical or psychosocial interventions. This thesis draws from a theory on economic determinants of mental health to explore if within-country increases in social protection policy expenditure levels over time can affect individuals' depressive symptom outcomes. We use cross-sectional panel data across three rounds of the European Social Survey and state-level social protection expenditure data from the OECD Social Expenditure database for 16 countries across three years (2006/12/14). We operationalize 8 survey questions from the ESS panel data into a depression score for three different sample populations (N’s = 30064, 21309, & 91859). We interact the depression score with country-level social protection expenditure data in 14 fixed effects regressions. Results show that increases in the expenditure level of a majority of state-level social policy programs have a small inverse relationship with individuals’ depressive symptom outcomes within the countries we have observed. Thus, within-country increases in social protection expenditure levels have a mitigating effect on individual-level depressive symptoms within that country's population.}},
  author       = {{Eger-Beyeler, Ari}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Spend More, Feel Better? Investigating the impact of social policy expenditure on the severity of individual depressive symptoms throughout Europe}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}