Several studies have found protective effects of low/moderate (hereafter “light”) alcohol consumption compared with “abstinence” on mortality, health and wage. Some of these studies have been criticised because former drinkers have been included among the abstainers, which may overstate...

Decomposition of a bivariate rank dependent index, such as the concentration index, is commonly used to explain socioeconomic inequalities in health. We introduce a new decomposition technique based on the recentered influence function that yields the marginal effects of covariates on the...

Using longitudinal data, this paper investigates the penalty for excess weight in the Swedish labor market, distinguishing between the productivity and the discrimination hypotheses. We analyze employment, income, and sickness absence , using the latter as a direct measure of productivity. We...

This study uses the Swedish register of prescribed drugs, merged with the Survey of Living Conditions (the ULF), to analyze the socioeconomic gradient in drug utilization. It finds a significant education gradient (but no income gradient) in individual drug utilization. Whereas the education...

This paper analyses the effect on meal consumption away from home of a point-of-purchase healthy symbol. We base the analysis on a field experiment in a lunch restaurant. Our results suggest that meal consumption does not increase if the meal is labeled with a healthy symbol. Also, the mean...

The primary objective of this study was to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for a new intervention at the workplace: wholesome canteen takeaways (CTA), i.e. a low fat meal with a large amount of vegetables prepared at the workplace canteen that only requires re-heating. The contingent...

This study uses Swedish data to analyze why the SES-health gradient increases with ageing. Since different measures of SES and health capture different aspects, we use this information to explore the age increase in health inequality and to discriminate between three types of explanations,...

This paper provides an extensive analysis of the demand for alcohol in terms of total quantity and quantity subdivided into frequency and intensity demand. The analysis compares across alcohol types (beer, wine and spirits), alcohol drinking pattern (average drinker vs. binge drinkers) and also...

Along with the economic and technological developments of the past decades, obesity has become a growing public health problem. This study empirically investigates whether the large and widespread increases in body-mass index (BMI) that have been observed around the world are related to economic...

We identify the ages that constitute critical periods in children’s development towards their adult health status. For this we use data on families migrating into Sweden from countries that are poorer, with less healthy conditions. Long-run health is proxied by adult height. The relation...