Brainstorm: Manic Depression, Occupational Choice And Creativity

Manic-depressive illness (bipolar disorder) afflicts approximately 2.3 million American adults. Although earnings, unemployment, and labor force participation patterns have been analyzed for manic-depressives in the economics literature, occupational choice has yet to be explored. A number of psychiatric studies link bipolar illness and occupational choice, focusing on occupational creativity. These are typically case studies or use small samples and may suffer from selection bias. Here we employ a populationbased data set, the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study. We first estimate a multinomial logit model of occupational outcomes as a function of bipolar diagnosis, then match the occupation of each individual to a measure of occupational creativity. We find that manic-depressives are disproportionately concentrated in the managerial and professional occupations, the most creative occupational category, as well as service occupations.