Peer Effects Of Mental Health Among College Students

The health level of college students is not only an important indicator of economic development,but also closely related to the accumulation of education capital such as knowledge and skills.Besides,it has crucial impacts on self-health,productivity,income,and economic development when in labor market.Therefore,it is vital and necessary to study the health level of college students for formulating human capital policies.In the research pertinent to human capital,studies on health capital have focused on physical health,while those on mental health have been relatively scarce.Along with the economic development and the quickening pace of society,the mental health problem becomes increasingly prominent.It is urgent to study the factors of mental health of college students.Peers are one of the key roles in the development of college students.The social interaction between people will bring about the externality of health capital accumulation,but the size and nature of the effect still need to be studied.Therefore,this paper mainly investigates the peer effect of college students’ health where the roommate is defined as her/his peer,and explores the influence of the roommate’s average mental health level and other exogenous characteristics on their own mental health level.The data used is a survey of freshmen of Class 2015 in a university in Jiangsu province,which is conducted within two months after freshman’s enrollment.The corelated effect problems caused by the common factor of psychological intervention in schools can be avoided by a relatively short time.And the data can also catch the relatively big fluctuation of mental health state brought by the role change.The dormitory arrangement is random,which to some extent excludes the corelated effect caused by the homogeneity of roommates.In addition,the paper also constructs a causal effect model between peer and college students’ mental health,and uses pre-college beer consumption as an instrumental variable to solve the possible endogenous problem.The results showed that:(1)The average mental health level of peers has a significant positive effect on mental health level even in a short time.Moreover,the peer effect of college students’ mental health is heterogeneous,and its coefficient is influenced by gender,urbanity and single-child status.Individuals who are male,from rural areas and single-child were more influenced by their peers.In addition,the magnitude of peer effect on mental health level also varies with one’s mental health level.Individuals with poorer mental health were more likely to be influenced by their peers.(2)The higher the proportion of peers who had the same experience of being left behind,the higher the level of their mental health.Girls,as well as individuals with poorer mental health,were more affected.And there is no evidence that peer interactions are segregated by poverty or rural or urban areas,and that peer composition does not have a significant impact on one’s own mental health.Understanding the mental health status of college students and its factors is beneficial to policy making and implementation.The existence of peer effect is a justification of the rationality of policy intervention,which will be helpful to the development of human resources and economy in capital accumulation.