Emma Tominey, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics and Related Studies
Emma is a labour and family Economist working on applied microeconometric methods.
She studied for her undergraduate and Masters in Economics at The University of Bristol and moved to University College London for her PhD. She has been at the University of York since 2010.
email: emma.tominey@york.ac.uk
Our 60-second interview with Emma:
What do you do in the field of mental health?
Mental health problems have been on the rise for several years now and through my research I try to understand why this is and what the long-run consequences are. The idea behind my research is to look for unexpected events that people are exposed to naturally, in their everyday life, to see how these events drive mental health now and in the future.
What do you find most rewarding and inspiring in this work?
That policy matters. We’re building a strong evidence base about the policies that can help and those that can harm the mental health of the population. For example, a welfare state that supports people when they need it, without creating stress and insecurity can help people in their time of need whilst protecting their mental health.
What is the most challenging or complicated aspect of this work?
Identifying effects that are relevant for policy making – i.e. causal inference – is really difficult but so important if we want to understand the full benefits or cost of policy reform. Luckily we’ve had huge methodological innovations in recent years that mean that, in the right setting, researchers can estimate not just the effect of certain policies or unexpected events, but understand causal mechanisms behind these effects.
What impact do you hope your work is having- or can potentially have?
As well as my research on mental health, I research how children are affected when mothers work more hours. With well-designed childcare subsidies, mums and dads can both work on their careers whilst their children thrive. I’d like my research to help the UK to get closer to that ideal, but we’re an outlier in rich countries. Childcare is so expensive and the subsidies don’t pay the childcare centres enough. There’s a way to go, but evidence tells us that high quality, standardised childcare is the way forward.
Could you share with us one piece of advice that you follow for your own mental health?
I’ve got two young children and the best decision I ever made for my mental health is NOT to aim for super mum / mum who has it all status! The three things that take up most of my time are my family, my work and exercise – everything else is filed under maybe/probably not.