This paper presents evidence that an individual's self-assessed health (SAH) does not only suffer from systematic reporting bias and adaptation bias but is also biased owing to confounding social norm effects. Using 13 waves of the British Household Panel Survey, I am able to show that, while...

This paper analyses the role of health on exits out of and entries into employment using data from the first twelve waves of the British Household Panel Survey (1991-2002). We use discretetime duration models to estimate the effect of health on the hazard of becoming non-employed and on the...

Self-assessed general health (SAH) is the most frequently employed health measure in economics research; however, it is poorly understood. In this paper we answer two questions: (i) what components of health does SAH measure? and (ii) does the use of SAH conceal important health effects? To...

There is a persistent association between health and portfolio choice, but hardly anything is known about the underlying sources of heterogeneity: what makes healthier individuals hold more risky assets? This paper uses rich Dutch longitudinal data to take into account and explain unobserved...

This paper investigates the relationships between social circumstances, individual behaviours, and ill-health later in life, with a particular focus on the development of cancer. A discrete latent factor model incorporating individuals' smoking and health outcomes (lifespan and time-to-cancer)...

Attention has been given recently to the Concentration Index; specifically, corrected versions have been generated that supersede the original with properties such as transform invariance, reversal invariance and transfer invariance. While previous studies have promoted a transformed or...

This paper uses the British Health and Lifestyle Survey (1984-1985) data and the longitudinal follow-up of May 2003 to investigate the de- terminants of premature mortality risk in Great Britain and the con- tribution of lifestyle choices to socio-economic inequality in health. A behavioural...

We measure socioeconomic inequalities in health across European Union Member States between 1994 and 2001. The analysis is based on the European Community Household Panel Users’ Database (ECHP-UDB) and uses two binary indicators of health limitations for the full 8 waves of available data....