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on Health Economics |
| By: | Heather Brown; Arne Risa Hole (Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield); Jennifer Roberts (Department of Economics, The University of Sheffield Author-Person=pro228) |
| Abstract: | The obesity epidemic has received widespread media and research attention. However, the social phenomenon of obesity is still not well understood. Data from the 2004 and 2006 waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) show positive and significant correlations in spousal body mass index (BMI). This paper explores three mechanisms of shared individual characteristics, social influence and shared environment to explain this correlation. A number of econometric specifications are used to investigate the role of observed individual characteristics, own health, spouse health, social influence, contextual effects and unobserved individual effects on the influence of these three hypotheses on the correlation in spousal BMI. Results indicate that social influence and shared individual characteristics, which may arise through assortative matching, both contribute to correlation in spousal BMI. |
| Keywords: | marriage, BMI, obesity |
| JEL: | D10 I10 J12 R23 |
| Date: | 2010–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:shf:wpaper:2010012&r=hea |
| By: | Karsten Hank |
| Abstract: | Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we investigated the role of childbearing history in later life health and mortality, paying particular attention to possible differences by sex and region. Higher parity is associated with better self-rated health in Western German mothers and fathers aged 50+, but its relationship with Eastern German women’s physical health and survival is negative. Early motherhood is paralleled by poorer physical health in West Germany, whereas late motherhood is associated with lower psychological well-being in East Germany. Moreover, among Western German women, having had a non-marital first birth is weakly correlated with lower physical health. Our findings support the notion of biosocial pathways playing an important role in shaping the fertility-health-nexus. Specifically, the Western German ‘male breadwinner’ model of specialisation appears to have buffered the stresses associated with childrearing, whereas fertility off the ‘normative’ life course track supposedly had adverse effects on women’s health in West Germany. |
| Keywords: | reproductive history; health; mortality; life course; SOEP |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp305&r=hea |
| By: | John Bailey Jones; Eric French |
| Abstract: | This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effects of employer-provided health insurance, Medicare, and Social Security on retirement behavior. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we estimate a dynamic programming model of retirement that accounts for both saving and uncertain medical expenses. Our results suggest that Medicare is important for understanding retirement behavior, and that uncertainty and saving are both important for understanding the labor supply responses to Medicare. Half the value placed by a typical worker on his employer-provided health insurance is the value of reduced medical expense risk. Raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 leads individuals to work an additional 0.074 years over ages 60-69. In comparison, eliminating two years worth of Social Security benefits increases years of work by 0.076 years. |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nya:albaec:10-10&r=hea |
| By: | Spencer, James H. |
| Abstract: | Recent efforts to reinvigorate the connections between urban planning and health have usefully brought the field back to one of its original roles. Current research, however, has focused on industrialized cities, overlooking some of the important urbanization processes in poor countries. This paper describes an emerging ‘health transition’ and the importance of socio-ecological approaches to understanding new health challenges in the developing world and uses the empirical case of Vietnam to examine the development dilemma of new industrial health concerns associated with economic development. The paper summarizes original qualitative data suggesting that one of the main benefits and rationales of the system is the improvement in public health that it has promoted. Using a related original sample survey (n=200) from 2005, the paper then tests a set of hypotheses about the relationship between illness, connections to the new system, and the role of pollution of natural water sources in illness. Findings suggest that fears of illness, and in particular new forms of industrial illnesses, are growing with rapid development as old forms of acute water borne disease are of less concern. |
| Keywords: | Water supply, perceptions, environmental health, transition, urbanization |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp2010-66&r=hea |
| By: | Wagstaff, Adam; Lindelow, Magnus |
| Abstract: | In Laos health shocks are more common than most other shocks and more concentrated among the poor. They tend to be more idiosyncratic than non-health shocks, and are more costly, partly because they lead to high medical expenses, but also because they lead to income losses that are sizeable compared with the income losses associated with non-health shocks. Health shocks also stand out from other shocks in the number of coping strategies they trigger: they are more likely than non-health shocks to trigger assistance from a nongovernmental organization and other households, dis-saving, borrowing, asset sales, an early harvest, the pawning of possessions, and the delaying of plans; by contrast, they are less likely to trigger assistance from government. Consumption regressions point to only limited evidence of households not being able to smooth consumption in the face of any shock. However, these results contrast with households'own assessments of the welfare impacts of shocks. The majority said they had to cut back consumption following a shock and that shocks considerably affected their welfare. Only health shocks are worse than a drought in terms of the likelihood of a family being forced to cut back consumption and in terms of the shock affecting a family's well-being"a lot."The poor are especially disadvantaged in terms of the greater damage that health shocks inflict on household well-being. Health shocks stand out too in leading to a loss of human capital: household members experiencing a health shock did not recover their former subjective health following the health shock, losing, on average, 0.6 points on a 5-point scale. The wealthier and better educated are better able to limit the health impacts of a health shock; the data are consistent with this being due to their greater proximity to a health facility. |
| Keywords: | Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Systems Development&Reform,Housing&Human Habitats,Rural Poverty Reduction,Economic Theory&Research |
| Date: | 2010–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:5335&r=hea |
| By: | Tommy E. Murphy |
| Abstract: | This paper brings the French case into the current debate on Malthusian dynamics in early modern times. In particular, it studies the long-term evolution of aggregate variables, showing that nineteenth century France was hardly a Malthusian world in a strict sense. Homeostasis was maintained throughout the century and there were signs of a strong positive check, but if there was some sort of preventive check, this was not ‘written in stone’. The results of both cointegrated VAR and short-run analysis grant a reading where departure from the Malthusian world (if there ever was one) is due to a secular change in the relationship between income, marriages, and births. If this interpretation is correct, the fertility decline was instrumental in the sustained decline in mortalit1y during the century. |
| Date: | 2010 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:igi:igierp:363&r=hea |
| By: | Jan Boone; Carline Droge; Ilaria Mosca; Rudy Douven, |
| Abstract: | In countries like the US and the Netherlands health insurance is provided by private firms. These private firms can offer both individual and group contracts. The strategic and welfare implications of such group contracts are not well understood. Using a Dutch data set of about 700 group health insurance contracts over the period 2007-2008, we estimate a model to determine which factors explain the price of group contracts. We find that groups that are located close to an insurers’ home turf pay a higher premium than other groups. This finding is not consistent with the bargaining argument in the literature as it implies that concentrated groups close to an insurer’s home turf should get (if any) a larger discount than other groups. A simple Hotelling model, however, does explain our empirical results. |
| Keywords: | health insurance; health-plan choice; managed competition |
| JEL: | I11 L13 |
| Date: | 2010–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpb:discus:152&r=hea |