Working, Schooling, and Psychological Well-Being: Evidence from Longitudinal Data for Taiwanese Youth

Abstract

This study investigates the associations between the psychological well-being of Taiwanese youths and their working and schooling behaviors during senior secondary education and beyond by applying rich longitudinal panel data and a random-effects estimation model. Four indexes for psychological well-being are considered: “happiness,” “mental disorder,” “physical disorder,” and “sleep disorder.” The results show that the associations between the psychological well-being of youths and their schooling and working behaviors from the ages of 19–24 are different from those from the ages of 16–18. Working at 19–24 years of age significantly reduces the degrees of loneliness, depression, and physical disorders, but this result does not hold for youths between the ages of 16 and 18. Regarding sleep disorders, youths who had jobs presented substantially fewer sleep disorders between the ages of 19 and 24 but more sleep disorders between ages 16 and 18. Youths who participated in labor market activities at 19–24 years of age were significantly happier than youths who were in school, while this association disappears when unobserved individual heterogeneity is taken into account.