The U.S. appears to have worse health than people in a number of European countries. Because health reflects an accumulation of processes over a lifetime, we will study how stressful events during the working years may affect pre-retirement health and ultimately longevity. The broad aims of this application are to find whether in panel data the health gap between the U.S. and Europe increases during the working years, but not during the post-retirement years, and to explain these broad facts by differences in the stress induced in the labor market and by differences in the ameliorating effects of economic and social policy (including health insurance). Our analysis will use data on 15 countries, which provides a wealth of variation in institutions in time as well as in space. The principal outcomes will be fourfold. First, this study will clarify at what point in the life-cycle health differences emerge and chart their path thereafter. Second, this study will propose a formal economic and biological model linking indicators of physiological functioning to other health and economic outcomes clarifying some of the concepts measured in the literature and guide empirical work on the topic. Third, this study will provide micro as well as cross-country empirical evidence on the relationship between economic stressful events and physiological dysregulation using biomarkers but also reported health measures. Fourth, because of its cross-country design, this study will exploit differences in social policy across countries and over time to see estimate how these policies contribute to the international differences in health through the effect of physiological dysregulation on health.
The U.S. has fallen behind in terms of life expectancy in the pre-retirement years and large differences in health have emerged between the U.S. and Europe. This project aims to test the hypothesis that differences in physiological dysregulation due to a more stressful working life in the U.S. are responsible for those differences. This project will use a large array of longitudinal datasets in 15 countries to link health outcomes in the pre-retirement years to life histories and exploit differences in social policy across countries.
| Bissonnette, Luc; Hurd, Michael D; Michaud, Pierre-Carl (2017) Individual survival curves comparing subjective and observed mortality risks. Health Econ 26:e285-e303 |
| Michaud, Pierre-Carl; Crimmins, Eileen; Hurd, Michael (2016) The Effect of Job Loss on Health: Evidence from Biomarkers. Labour Econ 41:194-203 |
| Solé-Auró, Aïda; Alcañiz, Manuela (2015) Are we living longer but less healthy? Trends in mortality and morbidity in Catalonia (Spain), 1994-2011. Eur J Ageing 12:61-70 |
| Solé-Auró, Aïda; Michaud, Pierre-Carl; Hurd, Michael et al. (2015) Disease incidence and mortality among older Americans and Europeans. Demography 52:593-611 |
