This paper studies the wage effects of the use of alcohol and tobacco. The analysis based on a recent survey in the Netherlands shows that for males the use of tobacco has a negative wage effect of about 10% while the use of alcohol has a positive wage effect of about the same size. The wages of...

We study the impact of early cannabis use on the school to work transition of young men. Our empirical approach accounts for common unobserved confounders that jointly affect selection into cannabis use and the transition from school to work using a multivariate mixed proportional hazard...

We use data from the European Community Household Panel to investigate the impact of obesity on wages in 9 European countries, ranging from Ireland to Spain. We find that the common impact of obesity on wages is negative and statistically significant, independently of gender. Given the nature of...

We use a natural experiment to show that the presence of an external examiner in standardized school tests reduces the proportion of correct answers in monitored classes by 5.5 to 8.5% - depending on the grade and the test - with respect to classes in schools with no external monitor. We find...

We use the compulsory school reforms implemented in European countries after the II World War to investigate the causal effect of education on the Body Mass Index (BMI) and the incidence of overweight and obesity among European females. Our IV estimates suggest that years of schooling have a...

In this paper we investigate the contribution of health related behaviors to the education gradient, using an empirical approach that addresses the endogeneity of both education and behaviors in the health production function. We apply this approach to a multi-country data set, which includes 12...

By increasing the residual working horizon of employed individuals, pension reforms that raise minimum retirement age are likely to affect the returns to investments in health-promoting behaviours before retirement, with consequences for individual health. Using the exogenous variation in...

We estimate the causal effects of regular and occasional grandchild care on the depression of grandmothers and grandfathers, using data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe and an instrumental variables strategy which exploits the variation in the timing of interviews...

We use data from three waves of Add Health to study the short- and long-run effects of high school peers' genetic predisposition to high BMI - measured by grade-mates' average BMI polygenic scores - on adolescent and adult obesity in the U.S. We find that, in the short-run, a one standard...

This paper studies the relationship between early mental health episodes and early homelessness, focusing on depression and anxiety amongst disadvantaged Australians. Using data from the Australian Journeys Home survey, we investigate whether the early onset of mental health conditions make a...