This paper investigates the use of self-funded commitment contracts to support individuals in achieving their goals of increased physical activity. We compare the effect of soft (non-incentivised) commitment contracts with hard (incentivised) contracts using a randomised experiment with 1629...

The prevalence of mental ill-health is increasing among young people in many developed countries, raising concerns about their well-being. Experts have pointed to several potential contributing factors, including a heightened emphasis on educational achievement and performance evaluation, as...

There has been much interest recently in the relationship between economic conditions and mortality, with some studies showing that mortality is pro-cyclical, while others find the opposite. Some suggest that the aggregation level of analysis (e.g. individual vs. regional) matters. We use both...

Several studies have found protective effects of low/moderate (hereafter "light") alcohol consumption compared with "abstinence" on mortality, health and wage. Some of these studies have been criticised because former drinkers have been included among the abstainers, which may overstate the...

This study uses Swedish data to analyze why the SES-health gradient increases with ageing. Since different measures of SES and health capture different aspects, we use this information to explore the age increase in health inequality and to discriminate between three types of explanations,...

This paper discusses measurement of socioeconomic inequalities in prevalence of a health condition. As its point of departure, it uses the recent exchange between Guido Erreygers and Adam Wagstaff in this journal, where they discuss merits of their own corrections of the frequently used...

Using longitudinal data, this paper investigates the penalty for excess weight in the Swedish labor market, distinguishing between the productivity and the discrimination hypotheses. We analyze employment, income, and sickness absence , using the latter as a direct measure of productivity. We...

This study uses the Swedish register of prescribed drugs, merged with the Survey of Living Conditions (the ULF), to analyze the socioeconomic gradient in drug utilization. It finds a significant education gradient (but no income gradient) in individual drug utilization. Whereas the education...

Body-mass index (BMI), sometimes calculated from objectively measured and sometimes from self-reported weight and height, has become the standard proxy for obesity in social science research. This study deals with the potential problems related to, first, relying on self-reported weight and...

The concentration index and decomposition analysis are commonly used in economics to measure and explain socioeconomic inequalities in health. Such analysis builds on the strong assumption that a health production function can be estimated without substantial bias implying that health is caused...