The remarkable growth of older population has moved long term care to the front ranks of the social policy agenda. Understanding the factors that determine the type and amount of formal care is important for predicting use in the future and developing long-term policy. In this context we jointly...

This paper considers the simultaneous explanation of mortality risk, health and lifestyles, using a reduced-form system of equations in which the multivariate distribution is defined by the copula. A copula approximation of the joint distribution allows one to avoid usually implicit...

The paper investigates whether self-assessed health status (SAH) contains information about future mortality and morbidity, beyond the information that is contained in standard “observable” characteristics of individuals (including pre-existing diagnosed medical conditions). Using a ten-year...

This paper investigates inequality in smoking-related mortality risk, focusing on the intergenerational transmission of smoking. We estimate a latent factor model for smoking initiation, cessation and mortality risk using the British Health and Lifestyle Survey (HALS). The empirical analysis...

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...

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...

The use of genetic markers as instrumental variables (IV) is receiving increasing attention from economists. This paper examines the conditions that need to be met for genetic variants to be used as instruments. We combine the IV literature with that from genetic epidemiology, with an...

Duration models for lifespan and smoking, that focus on the socio-economic gradient in smoking durations and length of life, are estimated controlling for individual-specific unobservable heterogeneity by means of a latent factor model. The latent factor influences the risk of starting and...

We provide new evidence on the extent to which the demand for cigarettes is derived from the demand for weight control (i.e. weight loss or avoidance of weight gain). We utilize nationally representative data that provide the most direct evidence to date on this question: individuals are...

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...