Immigrant Mental Health and Unemployment

The objective of this research is to assess whether stress associated with the transition to a new country combined with additional stress arising from unemployment affects the mental health of immigrants. I use the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia (LSIA) to examine the effect of labour force status on the mental health of immigrants. By using a rich longitudinal data set, I am able to control for individual immigrant differences whilst examining whether changes in mental health cause changes in labour force status rather than changes in labour force status causing changes in mental health. I find that causality runs from unemployment to mental health and that unemployment significantly adversely affects the mental health of immigrants. Other characteristics associated with poor mental health include; age, gender, visa category, marital status and educational attainment.