LAUSR

It has been previously shown that depression is negatively associated with the academic performance of university students. These results, however, rely on university grades and, thus, do not allow comparison of students from different educational organizations. As a result, the relationship between academic performance and depression on a population level is not well known. We use data from the Russian panel study 'TrEC' that tracks 4,893 participants since 2011. This panel is nationally representative for one age cohorts (13-14 years old in 2011). The data set includes educational outcomes of students measured using standardized tests (PISA scores and scores at Unified State Examination). In 2018, participants filled PHQ-9. At that point, many of them were in the first year of their Master's programs. The prevalence of depression (PHQ-9 > = 10) was 20% for women and 11% for men. We find no association between PHQ-9 scores for women and their PISA scores, Pearson's r = 0.01 (CI95% = [-0.03, 0.06]), however we find positive association for men, r = 0.16 (CI95% = [0.11, 0.20]). This corresponds to a relative risk of being depressed for the highest performing men (PISA levels 5 and 6) of 1.6. This result holds after controlling for the socioeconomic status of participants and the fact of studying at university. For those participants who study at a university, it is possible to additionally control for the selectivity of their university as the average academic performance of enrollees is publicly available information for Russian universities. We find that the personal educational outcomes rather than the selectivity of the university explain the results. It is generally believed that educational outcomes are negatively associated with depression. We find no such association for women and a positive association for men. This result might be particular to Russia or to a certain age cohort. In any case, they highlight the need for more research in this area. We use data from a nationally representative panel and find that educational outcomes measured by a standardized test are positively associated with depression for young men but not for young women.