Systematic pediatric evidence shows that the morbidity rates for children in day care are increasing in the group size.Sick children are usually cared for at home by parents. This creates a negative externality of parents' labor force participation. The social optimum implies lower group size...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of HIV/AIDS on fertility in Malawi. The future course of fertility will have an impact on both macroeconomic variables, such as GDP per capita, and various socioeconomic factors like mother-to-child-transmission of HIV, child mortality, the...

We use household survey data and a unique census of institutionalized children to analyze the impact of abortion legalization in Romania. We exploit the lift of the abortion ban in December 1989, when communist dictator Ceausescu and his regime were removed from power, to understand its impact...

Parental income is positively correlated with children?s educational attainment. This paper addresses the causality of this observed link. We have a unique data set for Norwegians born in the period from 1968-1973, with a measure of permanent family income from the children are 0-20 years old....

This paper analyzes the long-term sickness absences in Sweden using a longitudinal database that contains all compensated sickness spells for 2,789 persons during 1986-1991. Given the political focus on the improved collaboration between the individual, physician, employer, and social insurance...

This paper examines the causal effect of job loss on overall and cause-specific mortality. Using linked employer-employee register data, we identified the job losses due to all establishment closures in Sweden in 1987 and 1988. Hence, we have extended the case study approach, which has dominated...

We develop and explore an economic model in which cigarette consumption enhances utility but reduces the probability of survival through the period. Social capital is produced by time spent developing and maintaining social relationships. By requiring time inputs, social capital has an...

A health policy reform aiming to reduce hospital waiting times and sickness absences, the Faster Return to Work (FRW) scheme, is evaluated by creating treatment and control groups to facilitate causal interpretations of the empirical results. We use a unique dataset on individuals where we match...

New Zealand has one of the highest asthma prevalence rates among developed countries and previous research attributes this partly to poor socioeconomic conditions in certain neighborhoods and to insufficient home heating in particular. International retrospective empirical studies suggest that...

A number of behaviours influence health in a non-monotonic way. Physical activity and alcohol consumption, for instance, may be beneficial to one’s health in moderate but detrimental in large quantities. We develop a demand-for-health framework that incorporates the feature of a...