Education, labor market outcomes, and mental well-being

Abstract

This thesis provides new evidence on education, labor market outcomes, and mental well-being by utilizing various applied microeconometric methods and data sets. The data sets include rarely available measures of discipline problems, personality traits, and mental well-being combined with measures of class size, academic achievement, income, unemployment days, and graduation. The data are drawn from the ProKoulu intervention study, the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development, application data from centralized admission system in the fields of business and economics, and Finnish administrative data. The thesis consists of an introduction and three empirical articles. The first article investigates class size effects on discipline problems and academic achievement in primary school. The study shows that larger classes lead to higher levels of discipline problems and that class size seems to negatively associate with academic achievement. The second article moves on to higher education in early adulthood. It considers whether admission to or enrollment in a more selective institution assures graduation, yields higher income, or results in fewer days of unemployment. The results show that those who gained admission to or enrolled in a more selective business school over a less selective one experience fewer unemployment days and have higher degree completion probability. The effects on income are positive, but at the same time, they do not differ statistically from zero. The final article of the thesis studies if higher income is associated with higher mental well-being or its dimensions, and if personality traits moderate these associations. The findings indicate that income has a limited role in mental well-being and that personality traits most consistently moderate the relationship between income and a specific dimension of mental well-being, that is, emotional well-being.