The mentally-ill are at higher risk of needing to use income-support programs. However, psychological evidence suggests poor mental health increases the incidence of administrative burdens, raising concern about whether social assistance programs screen the mentally-ill efficiently. So far, the welfare consequences of such an inefficiency have been undocumented. I use administrative data from the Netherlands and show that eligible people with poor mental health receive social assistance around the same amount as the healthy. My theoretical framework shows that this correlation test is insufficient for characterizing welfare when take-up is driven by need vs ordeal-incidence: both could depend on mental health. I derive sufficient-statistics formulas for marginal welfare effects of changes in the costs and benefits of take-up separately. Administrative burden disproportionately screens out people with poor mental health, but the mentally-ill also value benefits more. These empirical estimates suggests reducing ordeals is about three times better than increasing benefits.

This study provides causal evidence that cash-transfer programs have potential to alleviate the income-health trap in advanced countries. We utilize variation provided by the Finnish basic income experiment which increased the average income of 2,000 randomly selected unemployed by 8–10% during the years 2017–2018. Our estimates imply that the experiment reduced both the use and the costs of psychotropic drugs by 8–11%. While these effects are stronger for less severe mental disorders, the results also suggest a reduction in mental health related specialized care.

This study examines the causal impact of expanding the elderly welfare expenditure in South Korea on the elderly suicide rate, utilizing changes in the Basic Pension system as an instrumental variable. We find that an increase in welfare expenditure significantly lowers suicide rate among those 65+, especially in men over 80. Lastly, our analysis of elderly households’ income and consumption indicates that while total income remained stable, consumption rose following enhanced public income transfers. This implies that stronger public income transfer programs reduce income uncertainty, boost consumption and leisure, and consequently lower the suicide rate.

We examine the health effects of a labor market activation policy, the Youth Job Guarantee, implemented in Sweden in 2007. To estimate the causal effects of this policy on health, we implement an RD-design using the age-eligibility threshold of the policy, together with detailed administrative data on health outcomes including measures of mental health. Health effects could arise indirectly via effects on employment, or directly, e.g., via an improved daily routine. In contrast to most of the existing literature on the health effects of ALMPs, our results indicate that the activation policy did not have clear positive effects on health one year after the start of the unemployment spell, measured by prescribed medication or healthcare visits.