The Effects of Broadband Internet on Mental Health

What is the effect of work-related ICT use outside work hours on mental health?

The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing challenges posed by the ever-increasing interactions between constant internet connectivity, work-life balance more generally and mental health specifically.

While the situation over the last few months stems from a unique crisis, it can be contextualized within recent and broader trends that evidence an increase in diagnosed and reported mental health conditions amongst recipients of disability insurance in many OECD countries.

Bearing this exceptional reality in mind alongside broader trends that encourage more work outside the conventional office, this project aims to study the complex links between connectivity to work during non-work time and employee mental health disorders.

I study the impact of diffusion of high-speed Internet on mental health-related disability insurance claims in Belgium from 1995 to 2012.

My empirical strategy exploits Belgian cross-municipality variation in supply-side constraints to high-speed Internet access based on the pre-existing telephone infrastructure in Belgium.

I combine administrative data from the Belgian Crossroads Bank for Social Security (CBSS), a rich set of individual-level microdata, with unique telecommunication data from the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications (BIPT) that document roll-out of ADSL technology across roughly 580 Belgian municipalities.By focusing on the usage of work-related ICT use after traditional work hours and linking that usage to mental well-being, this project offers innovative explanations to the existing economic, management and public policy-oriented literature on disability.

More specifically, this project contributes to the understanding of recent trends that fundamentally impact the expansion and costs of both regional and national disability insurance programs.