The high and rapidly increasing prevalence of mental illnesses underscores the importance of understanding their causal origins. This paper analyzes one factor at a critical stage of human development: exposure to maternal stress from family ruptures during the fetal period. We find that in...

We study the formation of social and emotional skills in the first three years of life, and investigate the impact of a cluster-randomized peer-led psychosocial intervention targeting perinatally depressed mothers in rural Pakistan. The intervention significantly improved maternal mental health,...

Outcomes related to the wellbeing of students are increasingly being recognized as valuable objectives for education systems. In this study, we ask if high-stakes testing affects school-related stress among students and if there are gender differences in these effects. We combine macro-level...

Starting in 2004/2005, the German state Baden-Wurttemberg reduced academic track duration from nine to eight years, leaving cumulative instruction time mostly unchanged. I use this change in schooling policy to identify the effect of schooling intensity on student well-being in life and school,...

This paper studies how stress affects the mortality risk. Using a flexible approach and allowing for timevarying treatment effects, I find no impact of stress on the short-run mortality risk but a substantially increase in the long-run. The effects are especially pronounced for men. I provide...

Early life conditions have been linked to various domains of later life health, including cardiovascular outcomes. Using life history data from 13 European countries, I find that childhood socioeconomic status and measures of childhood health are related to hypertension, although there is cross...

A perception at the core of studies that consider the link between social rank and stress (typically measured by the so-called stress hormone cortisol) is that the link is direct. Examples of such studies are Bartolomucci (2007), Beery and Kaufer (2015), and Koolhaas et al. (2017). A recent and...

A perception at the core of studies that consider the link between social rank and stress (typically measured by the so-called stress hormone cortisol) is that the link is direct. Examples of such studies are Bartolomucci (2007), Beery and Kaufer (2015), and Koolhaas et al. (2017). A recent and...

While several studies suggest that stress-related mental health problems among school children are related to specific elements of schooling, empirical evidence on this causal relationship is scarce. We examine a German schooling reform that increased weekly instruction time and study its...

While several studies suggest that stress-related mental health problems among school children are related to specific elements of schooling, empirical evidence on this causal relationship is scarce. We examine a German schooling reform that increased weekly instruction time and study its...