Coverage of our new @nber.org working paper @upshot.nytimes.com @sangerkatz.bsky.social. Really appreciate the perspectives of the various folks they interviewed.

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/17/u...

Interested in the link between social media and mental health? Come work at NIPH (Oslo, Norway) as a PhD student! It’s a paid PhD position, you’ll have access to really good data, and a very nice work environment.
#SocSky #EpiSky #PublicHealth 🧪

🧪 How are risk factors like parental mental illness and low education distributed across families? This cool new paper explores how couples resemble each other — both before and (even more so) after meeting. A highly recommended read for those interested in intergenerational mobility + genetics.

a sense of purpose, and may increase one's social network (e.g. meeting other parents, teachers etc). These factors could be protective in terms of mental health. I want to emphasise though that we cannot conclude about mechanisms based on our data. (2/2)

Personally, I think both selection into parenthood and "lifestyle effects" of parenthood are possible explanations. It's not random who becomes a parent, parents typically are healthier. At the same time, parenthood also often results in a need for structure and routines in daily life, gives (1/2)

Good question! Unfortunately, from the data we cannot know why people do/don’t see their GP. However, it seems unlikely that children keep parents too busy to visit their doctor at all ages (incl 50+). Parents also had a higher risk of certain symptoms, suggesting they don’t avoid seeing their GP.

Absolutely! Unfortunately we don’t have health care records that stretch long enough to look at mental illness in early life. But we could (and did) control for marital status. Regardless of controls though, we cannot conclude about causality. So we see selection into parenthood as a key factor.

🧪

🙋🏻‍♀️ I’m an interdisciplinary social scientist with an econ/psychology background. www.fhi.no/en/ab/depart...

Also happy to be included! I work on socio-economic inequalities in health in Norway.

🙋🏻‍♀️ (if there’s still room!) I do research on the drivers of mental health inequalities using population registry data📉

Overall, parenthood appears to be an important indicator of mental health inequalities in the Norwegian population. Its growing importance may suggest stronger selection into parenthood across time and cohorts.

#MedSky #PublicHealth #MentalHealth

Key insights (2/2):

• From 2006 to 2019, the mental health gap between parents and the childless has widened significantly
• Not all diagnoses and symptoms were negatively associated with parenthood; parents had higher odds of certain adverse mental health outcomes

Key insights (1/2):

• Sibling- and twin-matched analyses were largely consistent with population-based results
• The difference in mental health was especially large for men and among those with only compulsory education

New preprint 📈📉

🧠👶🏻 We explored the link between parenthood and mental health in over 2M Norwegians using primary health care records. We found that parents generally experienced fewer mental disorders, even after accounting for factors like education and marital status.

🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2024...

Hello all Oslo-people:

Next Wednesday (20th of Nov), my colleagues and I will be at Kulturhuset and present research findings about social differences and mental health. The event is open to all (but will be in Norwegian): www.fhi.no/om/kurs-og-k...

Recently accepted to #REStud, ``The Child Penalty Atlas" quantifies the unequal effects of parenthood on men and women’s employment in 134 countries.

From Henrik Kleven, Camille Landais & Gabriel Leite Mariante:

www.restud.com/the-child-pe...

#Fertility, #Childcare, #Children, #Youth

🙋🏻‍♀️ And thanks for making this!!

Some articles from @reveconstudies.bsky.social are more relevant than ever before:
"In all countries, respondents greatly overestimate the total number of immigrants, think immigrants are culturally and religiously more distant from them, and economically weaker"
academic.oup.com/restud/artic...

Many Stata users will be familiar with the -motivate- command. Only today did I learn of the -motivatedolly- command.

Psykisk helse hos barn varierer sterkt etter foreldrenes inntekt og utdanning. Hvorfor er det sånn?

I fire år har vi forsket på sosial ulikhet, psykisk helse og genetikk. Kom på Kulturhuset onsdag 20. november kl. 9, så får du høre hva vi har funnet ut!

www.fhi.no/om/kurs-og-k...