NBER Publications by Margarita Alegria

This paper uses data from the NIMH Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys to estimate the effects of psychiatric disorder on employment. We model the employment and disorder outcomes jointly with a bivariate probit model using local availability of treatment resources and early onset of disorder as identifying variables. As a complement to our main findings, we apply methods proposed in Altonji, Elder and Taber (2005) that allow one to gauge the sensitivity of the estimated effect of disorder to various degrees of selection on unobserved variables, without relying on identifying exclusions. Among males, psychiatric disorder in the past 12 months is associated with a reduction of 9 to 11 percentage points in the likelihood of current labor force participation and a reduction of ab...

This paper investigates to what extent psychiatric disorders and mental distress affect labor market outcomes among ethnic minorities of Latino and Asian descent, most of whom are immigrants. Using data from the National Latino and Asian American Study, we examine the labor market effects of meeting diagnostic criteria for any psychiatric disorder in the past 12 months as well as the effects of psychiatric distress in the past year. Among Latinos, psychiatric disorders and mental distress are associated with detrimental effects on employment and absenteeism, similar to effects found in previous analyses of mostly white, American born populations. Among Asians, we find mixed evidence that psychiatric disorders and mental distress detract from labor market outcomes.