A vast body of research confirms the strong relation between health and socio-economic status (SES). Research has extensively explored the various causal links that may connect SES and health. Although it is clear that a positive relation between SES and health is present in a variety of countries, it is much less clear how policy, culture, and institutional setting may influence the relation between health and SES. This is of eminent importance if one wants to devise policies that mitigate the link between SES and health, for instance. The primary aim of this project is to investigate the health-SES nexus in a systematic cross country comparison using comparable data from twelve different countries (United States, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, Switzerland, and Austria) taking advantage of recently and soon-to-be-collected cross-nationally comparable data sets. To do so we take a number of steps. We construct theoretical models that provide a framework for analysis of the SES-Health relationship and in particular for the role of institutions in shaping that relationship. We devise and implement several methods to make health measures comparable across countries, including the use of vignettes to adjust self-reports of health and the use of objective health measures like grip strength and walking speed tests. We build and test formal models for the correction of health measures across countries to make them comparable. With these instruments in hand we provide evidence for (or against) various stylised facts that follow from the theoretical models. Next we estimate various econometric models in order of increasing complexity with the goal of quantifying the SES-Health nexus and how it is influenced by institutions. Finally we simulate counterfactuals to quantify the effects of policies on the nature and strength of the health-SES nexus.
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