TY  - JOUR
AU  - Frank,Richard G.
AU  - Gertler,Paul J.
TI  - The Effect of Mental Distress on Income:  Results from a Community Survey
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 2433
PY  - 1991
Y2  - December 1991
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2433
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w2433.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Richard Frank
Department of Health Care Policy
Harvard Medical School
180 Longwood Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
Tel: 617/432-0178
Fax: 617/432-1219
E-Mail: frank@hcp.med.harvard.edu

Paul J. Gertler
Haas School of Business
545 Student Services Building
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1900
Tel: 510/642-1418
Fax: 510/642-4700
E-Mail: gertler@haas.berkeley.edu
AB  - We employ a unique data set from a community based survey to assess the effect of mental distress on earnings. The main advantage of the data is that detailed measurements of mental health status were made on all subjects in the study. This means that our population-based measure of mental distress does not rely on a patient having had contact with the health care system and obtaining a diagnosis from a provider. The use of diagnosis-based measures may introduce measurement-error bias into the estimates. Our results show that the presence of mental distress reduces earnings by approximately 21% to 33%. To assess the magnitude of any measurement-error bias we present a estimates of models using measures of mental health both on a population-wide basis and on a diagnosis basis. The estimated impact of mental illness on earning is only 9% lower using the using the diagnosis-based measure. The conclusion drawn from this is that little bias is introduced by using the diagnosis-based measure.
ER  -