Although the COVID-19 pandemic has affected everyone's life, the risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19 increases exponentially with age. Using data from the 2013 and 2021 American Time Use Survey Well-Being Modules, this paper examines how various measures of subjective well-being have...

This paper explores the causal effect of volunteer work providing daily assistance to the elderly on elderly mortality. To identify the causal effect, I exploit the earthquake that occurred in midwestern Japan in 1995 as a natural experiment inducing exogenous variation in the level of...

Do wealth shocks affect the health of the elderly in developed countries? The economic literature is skeptical about such effects which have so far only been found for poor retirees in poor countries. In this paper I show that wealth shocks also matter for the health of wealthy retirees in the...

We analyze the effect of income on mortality in Austria using administrative social security data. To tackle potential endogeneity concerns arising in this context, we estimate time-invariant firm-specific wage components and use them as instruments for actual wages. While we do find...

We use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of election to political office on natural lifespan. In contrast to previous findings of shortened lifespan among US presidents and other heads of state, we find that US governors and other political office holders live over...

This study analyzes the causal effect of an increase in the retirement age on health. We exploit a sizable cohort-specific pension reform for women using two complementary empirical approaches - a Regression Discontinuity Design and a Difference-in-Differences approach. The analysis is based on...

We estimate the causal effect of permanent and premature exits from the labor force on mortality. To overcome the problem of negative health selection into early retirement, we exploit a policy change in unemployment insurance rules in Austria that allowed workers in eligible regions to exit the...

This paper sheds new light on the mortality effect of delaying retirement by investigating the impacts of the 1967 Spanish pension reform. This reform exogenously changed the early retirement age, depending on the date individuals started contributing to the Social Security system. Those...

We estimate the effect of additional pension income on mortality outcomes by exploring the eli- gibility criteria of a German program subsidizing the pensions of low-wage workers. Using novel administrative data, we find that eligibility leads to a 2-month delay in age at death (censored at 75)....

Since World War II, mortality has declined in the developing world. This paper examines the effects of this mortality decline on demographic and economic growth by a family-optimization model, in which fertility is endogenous and wealth yields utility through its status. The decline in mortality...