Forthcoming in AER: Insights: "Reskilling and Resilience" by Anders Humlum and Pernille Plato.
(Forthcoming Article) - This paper shows that effective reskilling substantially reduces antidepressant
use among injured workers and their partners. Exploiting
institutional variation in access to higher education following
work accidents in Denmark, we find that reskilling prevents
antidepressant use for one in three participants, with partner
spillovers of comparable magnitude. These effects emerge while
workers are in school—prior to any income gains—and coincide
with increased partner employment. Assuming a one-to-one mapping
between prescriptions and depressive episodes, the value of
these health improvements adds 50% to the direct labor earnings
gains from reskilling; partner earnings gains add another 33%.
