30 September 2025, 13.00 Stockholm
Can municipalities mitigate the effect of parental job loss on children mental health? Valid test when using machine learning methods
Speaker: Natalia Andreeva, Department of Statistics, Umeå University
Abstract: Parental job losses have a well-documented detrimental impact on the mental health of children, yet little is known about how local authorities may shield children’s health from adverse events in parental working lives. We hypothesized that higher municipal funding of elementary schools, after-school care, and hiring more qualified teachers can mitigate the adverse consequences of parental job loss. Using data from the intergenerationally linked Swedish register, we constructed an analytical sample of children aged 7–10 years, whose parents lost jobs during the years 2006-2013 and their matched controls. We identified parental job loss through workplace closures and measured children’s mental health outcomes through prescriptions for anxiety and depression disorders. We present a framework using state-of-the-art machine learning methods, and develop a design taking advantage of the available rich and complex data, which allows us to study and test for causal effects heterogeneity in children’s health across municipalities. Our results demonstrated that increasing municipal spending on elementary schools and after-school centers by 7,500 SEK per student significantly alleviated the negative impacts of parental job loss: by at least half in the case of paternal job loss and by about 90% in the case of maternal job loss. Increasing the percent of highly qualified teachers to 90% also alleviated the effect of maternal job losses, however, we did not find statistically significant moderation in the case of fathers’ job loss. Our findings highlight the importance of the compensatory role municipal authorities play in reducing inequality in children’s mental health.
Place: Zoom