There is a well-established debate between Heckman sample selection and two-part models in health econometrics, particularly when no obvious exclusion restrictions are available. Most of this debate has focussed on the application of these models to health care expenditure. This paper revisits...

Using the nationally representative Slan dataset we calculate concentration indices for the incidence of obesity for men and women. We finder higher concentration indices for women than for men, but we also find that concentration indices fell between 2002 and 2007. However this appears to be...

Using the nationally representative Slan dataset we take a number of approaches to profile the change in obesity in Ireland over the 2002-2007 period. There is no evidence of either first or second order stochastic dominance between the two years. There is evidence that obesity and overweight...

We study the association between education and body mass index across ten European countries (Denmark, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Ireland, Italy, Austria, Portugal, Finland and Sweden) using the European Community Household Panel. OLS and Probit estimation suggest that on average education is...

This paper proposes a new method of measuring obesity using Body Mass Index (BMI) data. Conventional measures which simply count the number of individuals with BMI in excess of an upper limit ignore the extent by which individuals exceed BMI limits and also the increased risk ratios for various...

This paper considers the identification of the effect of tobacco on mortality. If individuals select into smoking according to some unobserved health characteristic, then estimates of the effect of tobacco on health that do not account for this are biased. We show that using information on...