Associate Professor Ehsan Latif  new research examines the impact of an economic downturn on mental health in Canada. His research uses longitudinal Canadian data from the National Population Health Survey (1994-2006) in order to examine the impact of the provincial unemployment rate on mental health as measured by the short form depression scale.

To control for unobserved individual specific factors, his study utilized an individual specific fixed-effects model. Professor Latif found that the provincial unemployment rate has a significant positive impact on depression. The study further examined the impact of unemployment rate on depression for a number of sub-groups based on gender, age, marital status, and education. The results suggest that the impacts of unemployment rate on depression are heterogeneous across different sub-groups. His research got accepted for publication in the International Journal of Social Economics.