This work estimates the association between various types of physical activities and physical health, mental health and health service utilization. Specifically, we consider participation in housework, manual, walking, sports/exercise and total physical activities to a moderate level. We view...

This paper studies how spouses' life satisfaction levels are correlated. Using the British Household Panel Survey, it tests whether the observed positive correlation in life satisfaction is due to assortative mating, shared social environment, or spillover effect of well-being between partners....

This note investigates Schkade and Kahneman's (1998) maxim that "Nothing in life is quite as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it". The paper shows that whilst becoming unemployed hurts psychologically, unemployment has a greater impact on happiness if the person also...

This paper explores variations in the uptake of breast cancer screening and associated factors influencing utilisation of mammography screening among women aged 50 to 69 years in 13 European countries. We focus on the relative importance of individual (e.g. age, education, etc.) and...

High school dropout is an important policy issue and its determinants are a longstanding interest of economics. However, very little is known on the roles of noncognitive traits in influencing school dropoutdecisions. We employ voluntary forgone health care as a proxy for the underlying...

This paper identifies and estimates the impact of early retirement on the probability to die within five years,using administrative micro panel data covering the entire population of the Netherlands. Among the older workers we focus on, a group of civil servants became eligible for retirement...

This study uses the Vietnam Young Lives Survey to investigate the impact of small-scale weather shocks on child nutritional status as well as the mechanism through which weather shocks affect child nutritional status. The results show that small-scale weather shocks negatively affect child...

We attempt to answer a simple empirical question: does having children make a parent live longer? The hypothesis we offer is that a parent's immune system is refreshed by a child's infections at a time when their own protection starts wearing thin. With the boosted immune system, the parent has...

This paper develops and estimates a model that integrates two fundamental theories of individual health behavior: the Becker-Murphy model of rational addiction and the Grossman model of health investment. We define an individual's lifetime smoking consumption pattern and investments in health...