We study the effects of public pension systems on the retirement timing of older workers and, in turn, the health consequences of delaying retirement by those workers. Causal inference relies on a social security reform in Israel that shifted payments from husbands to their (non-working) wives,...

In an effort to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the globe adopted social distancing measures. Previous studies have relied on the geographical and temporal variation in the adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to show that early adoption of NPIs...

The COVID-19 virus, also known as the coronavirus, is currently spreading around the world. While a growing literature suggests that exposure to pollution can cause respiratory illness and increase deaths among the elderly, little is known about whether increases in pollution could cause...

We study how a negative labor market shock like job loss generates health spillovers in couples. Using administrative data of all workers and firms matched to mortality and patient records, we document that male job displacement increases the mortality risk for both the man and his partner. For...

We assess the short-term effects of the two recent economic crises, the Great Recession and the collapse of the USSR, on the elderly mortality in Russia. According to our study, crises have led to an increase in mortality with quantitatively similar elasticities of death with respect to GDP fall...

This paper uses several large cross-sectional data sources and a new approach to estimate midlife effects of entering the labor market in a recession on mortality by cause and various measures of socioeconomic status. We find that cohorts coming of age during the deep recession of the early...

This paper assesses the effect of import competition on the labor market and health outcomes of US workers. We first show that import shocks affect employment and income, but only in areas where jobs are more intense in routine tasks. Exploiting over 40 million individual observations on health...

In the field of mortality, the Lee–Carter based approach can be considered the milestone to forecast mortality rates among stochastic models. We could define a “Lee–Carter model family” that embraces all developments of this model, including its first formulation (1992) that remains the...

Estimation of future mortality rates still plays a central role among life insurers in pricing their products and managing longevity risk. In the literature on mortality modeling, a wide number of stochastic models have been proposed, most of them forecasting future mortality rates by...

I estimate the effect of retirement on mortality, exploiting two discontinuities at age-based eligibility thresholds for pension claiming in Germany. The analysis is based on unique social security records that document the age at death for the universe of participants in the German public...

We investigate the returns to college attendance in Canada in terms of health and mortality reduction. To do so, we first use a dynamic health microsimulation model to document how interventions which incentivize college attendance among high school graduates may impact their health trajectory,...

This study analyses the relationship between life expectancy and parental education. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study and survival analysis models, we show that maternal education is related to children's life expectancy - even after controlling for children's own level...

The Black Death killed 40% of Europe's population between 1347-1352, making it one of the largest shocks in the history of mankind. Despite its historical importance, little is known about its spatial effects and the effects of pandemics more generally. Using a novel dataset that provides...

We estimate the effect of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion on county-level mortality in the first four years following expansion. We find a reduction in all-cause mortality in ages 20 to 64 equaling 11.36 deaths per 100,000 individuals, a 3.6 percent decrease. This estimate is largely...

This study analyses the relationship between life expectancy and parental education. It extends the previous literature that focused mostly on the relationship between individuals' own education and their life expectancy. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study and survival...

Superstition is a widespread phenomenon. We empirically examine its impact on health-related behavior and health outcomes. We study the case of the Taiwanese Ghost month. During this period, which is believed to increase the likelihood of bad outcomes, we observe substantial adaptions in...

Superstition is a widespread phenomenon. We empirically examine its impact on health-related behavior and health outcomes. We study the case of the Taiwanese Ghost month. During this period, which is believed to increase the likelihood of bad outcomes, we observe substantial adaptions in...

This paper empirically investigates the long-run effects of major health improvements on income growth in the United States. To isolate exogenous changes in health, the econometric model uses quasi-experimental variation in cardiovascular disease mortality across states over time. The results...

This paper provides a large scale, empirical evaluation of unintended effects from invoking the precautionary principle after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. After the accident, all nuclear power stations ceased operation and nuclear power was replaced by fossil fuels, causing an...

On July 13, 2020 a complete nation-wide ban was placed on the sale and transport of alcohol in South Africa. This paper evaluates the impact of this sudden and unexpected five-week alcohol prohibition on mortality due to unnatural causes. We find that the policy reduced the number of unnatural...

The aim of this paper is to present life expectancy of both genders depending on their income and to determine the impact of a possible regularity on the state pension policy. The study was based on the income of pensioners in Poland (over 5 million people receiving old-age pension). The results...

Predicting the evolution of mortality rates plays a central role for life insurance and pension funds. Standard single population models typically suffer from two major drawbacks: on the one hand, they use a large number of parameters compared to the sample size and, on the other hand, model...

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an unprecedented economic crisis. This article analyses the impact of mandatory social distancing imposed by lockdown policies and voluntary social distancing triggered by COVID-19 fatality rates on GDP growth in the first three quarters of 2020 for a sample...

Statistics Norway projects the population by age, sex and immigrant background at the national level. This paper examines the accuracy of the Norwegian population projections produced between 1996 and 2018. We assess deviations between projected and registered numbers, both for the total...

On July 13, 2020 a complete nation-wide ban was placed on the sale and transport of alcohol in South Africa. This paper evaluates the impact of this sudden and unexpected five-week alcohol prohibition on mortality due to unnatural causes. We find that the policy reduced the number of unnatural...

We derive an analytic expression describing how health costs and death counts of the Covid-19 pandemic change over time as vaccination proceeds. Meanwhile, the disease may continue to spread exponentially unless checked by Non Pharmacological Interventions (NPI). The key factors are that the...

We investigate the effect of extreme temperatures on mortality and emergency hospital admissions, and whether local social care allows to mitigate their adverse effects. We merge monthly administrative data on mortality and hospital discharge from Italian municipalities for the period 2001-2015...

Linking health to the employment history of the whole Slovenia's workforce, this paper employs three innovative features. First, it utilizes a novel "double proof" approach of addressing the reverse causality that tracks only healthy individuals, making sure that any unemployment spell that...

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about massive declines in wellbeing around the world. This paper seeks to quantify and compare two important components of those losses - increased mortality and higher poverty - using years of human life as a common metric. We estimate that almost 20 million...

Central and Eastern European countries faced a serious mortality crisis in the second part of the 20th century, resulting in many years of decreasing life expectancy. In the last few decades, however, this was followed by a period in which mortality improved. This dichotomy of past trends makes...

Central and Eastern European countries faced a serious mortality crisis in the second part of the 20th century, resulting in many years of decreasing life expectancy. In the last few decades, however, this was followed by a period in which mortality improved. This dichotomy of past trends makes...

We exploit the gender-specific components of large-scale labor demand shocks stemming from rising international manufacturing competition to test how shifts in the relative economic stature of young men versus young women affected marriage, fertility and children's living circumstances during...

We exploit the gender-specific components of large-scale labor demand shocks stemming from rising international manufacturing competition to test how shifts in the relative economic stature of young men versus young women affected marriage, fertility and children's living circumstances during...

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...