We provide a step-by-step guide for developing, administering, evaluating, and acting on a survey-based study of graduate student mental health. Blueprint focuses on forging student-faculty collaboration and is based on Harvard University’s Graduate Student Mental Health Initiative (GSMHI). The survey tool we use includes validated screening instruments for depression, anxiety, imposter phenomenon, self-esteem, alcohol consumption, exercise and sleep habits, and loneliness. It also includes environmental questions that collect epidemiologic data, as well as ratings of advising relationships and student dynamics. After 6 years, GSMHI has analyzed data from 30 different PhD programs and 4,866 students, overseen the implementation of more than 60 departmental action plans, and performed 9 follow-up surveys to assess progress. It has achieved high response rates (60–90%), discovered wide variation in mental health and environmental factors across departments, and supported experiments with interventions. We hope this blueprint helps other universities run similar initiatives.

Using administrative criminal records from Texas, we show how heat affects criminal defendants, police officers, prosecutors, and judges. We find that arrests increase by up to 15% on hot days, driven by increases in violent crime. We see no evidence that charging-day heat impacts prosecutorial decisions. However, working alone, judges dismiss fewer cases, issue longer prison sentences, and levy higher fines when ruling on hot days. Higher incomes, newer housing, more teamwork, and less accessible weapons may decrease the adverse effects of heat. Even with adaptation, we forecast that climate change will increase crime and have substantial distributional consequences.

We study how immigrant children integrate economically into a new society. Using administrative data from Sweden, we show that immigrant children who grow up in the 20th income percentile have incomes in adulthood that are about 12% lower than those of native children of similarly low-income parents. This income gap cannot be explained by differences in parent education levels, family structure, or municipality of residence. The gap can, however, be explained by differences in immediate, 100 x 100 square meter neighborhoods. Low-income immigrant children grow up in relatively denser neighborhoods with fewer high-earning and native-born neighbors. Administrative data from Stockholm suggest that immigrant neighborhoods are also less desirable than the ones where low income natives live and have worse schools. While we cannot rule out selection as a driving force for these results, our evidence suggests that urban planning decisions, especially ones that limit access to housing, can be significant barriers to immigrant intergenerational mobility.

Female workers earn $0.89 for each male-worker dollar even in a unionized workplace where tasks, wages, and promotion schedules are identical for men and women by design. Using administrative time-card data on bus and train operators, we show that this earnings gap can be explained by female operators taking fewer hours of overtime and more hours of unpaid time-off than male operators. Female operators, especially those with dependents, pursue schedule conventionality, predictability, and controllability more than male operators. We demonstrate that while reducing schedule controllability can limit the earnings gap, it can also hurt female workers and their productivity.

We study the mental health of graduate students at 8 top-ranked economics PhD programs in the U.S. using clinically validated surveys. We find that 24.8% experience moderate or severe symptoms of depression or anxiety - more than two times the population average. Though our response rate was 45.1% and sample selection concerns exist, conservative lower bounds nonetheless suggest higher prevalence rates of such symptoms than in the general population. Mental health issues are especially prevalent at the end of the PhD program: 36.7% of students in years 6+ of their program experience moderate or severe symptoms of depression or anxiety, versus 21.2% of first-year students. 25.2% of economics students with these symptoms are in treatment, compared to 41.4% of graduate students in other programs. A similar percentage of economics students (40-50%) say they cannot honestly discuss mental health with advisers as say they cannot honestly discuss research progress or non-academic career options. Only 26% find their work to be useful always or most of the time, compared to 70% of economics faculty and 63% of the working age population. We provide recommendations for students, faculty, and administrators on ways to improve graduate student mental health.