Lee Kristen Schultz, Yang Yulin
Department of Sociology, University at Buffalo, SUNY, United States.
University of California, San Francisco, United States.
SSM Ment Health. 2022 Dec;2. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmmh.2022.100138. Epub 2022 Aug 6.
Education has been conceptualized as a causal factor leading to emotional well-being. However, it is also possible that some of the effect of education may be due to selection factors. Analyzing data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (n = 10,908), we asked: to what extent does educational attainment increase emotional well-being once stable observed and unobserved individual characteristics are accounted for? Findings from fixed effects models showed that attaining a college degree was associated with greater emotional well-being. However, interactions with gender indicate that the positive association with emotional well-being is primarily for women, although a small negative association between completing college and depressive affect was found for men. These findings point to unmeasured confounding factors as motivating some of the association between educational attainment and emotional well-being among adolescents and adults.
教育被视为导致情绪健康的一个因果因素。然而，教育的某些影响也可能归因于选择因素。通过分析来自全国青少年至成人健康纵向研究的数据（n = 10,908），我们提出问题：在考虑了稳定的观察到的和未观察到的个体特征后，教育程度在多大程度上能提升情绪健康？固定效应模型的结果表明，获得大学学位与更高的情绪健康相关。然而，与性别的交互作用表明，与情绪健康的正相关主要体现在女性身上，尽管发现男性完成大学学业与抑郁情绪之间存在小的负相关。这些发现指出，未测量的混杂因素是青少年和成年人教育程度与情绪健康之间某些关联的驱动因素。
