A cross-country analysis of the risk factors for depression at the micro and macro level

Maximo Rossi, Universidad del Uruguay - Departamento de Economía (dECON)
Natalia Melgar, Universidad del Uruguay - Departamento de Economía (dECON)

Abstract

Depression is one of the most widespread mental illnesses that affect people worldwide for very divergent reasons. The relevance of investigating what are the factors that facilitate depression are twofold: 1) its strong impact on the quality of life and happiness and 2) the possibility of identifying risk groups. In 2001, the World Health Organization (WHO) projected that depression was expected to be the first disorder in the developed word by 2020. In 2003, the WHO estimated that the overall cost of mental disorders accounted for between three and four percent of Gross Domestic Product. WHO (2007) stated that depression alone is responsible for 4.5% of the worldwide total burden of disease. The dataset for this research is the 2007 GALLUP Public Opinion Poll (a large and widely heterogeneous dataset, 93 countries and more than 80,000 observations).