This paper explores the causal effect of volunteer work providing daily assistance to the elderly on elderly mortality. To identify the causal effect, I exploit the earthquake that occurred in midwestern Japan in 1995 as a natural experiment inducing exogenous variation in the level of...

Do wealth shocks affect the health of the elderly in developed countries? The economic literature is skeptical about such effects which have so far only been found for poor retirees in poor countries. In this paper I show that wealth shocks also matter for the health of wealthy retirees in the...

We report evidence of long-term adverse health impacts of in utero exposure to malnutrition based on survivors in their 50s who were born during the China Famine that occurred in the years 1959-1961. We take advantage of recently available data provided by the China Health and Retirement...

We analyze the effect of income on mortality in Austria using administrative social security data. To tackle potential endogeneity concerns arising in this context, we estimate time-invariant firm-specific wage components and use them as instruments for actual wages. While we do find...

Although industrialized nations have long provided public protection to working-age individuals with disabilities, the form has changed over time. The impetus for change has been multi-faceted: rapid growth in program costs; greater awareness that people with impairments are able and willing to...

This paper investigates the effects of retirement on various health outcomes. Data stem from the first three waves of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). With this informative data, non-parametric matching methods can be applied to identify causal effects. It is found that...

This paper explores the causal effect of volunteer work providing daily assistance to the elderly on elderly mortality. To identify the causal effect, I exploit the earthquake that occurred in midwestern Japan in 1995 as a natural experiment inducing exogenous variation in the level of...

Cognitive functioning of elderly individuals may be affected by events such as the loss of a (grand)child or partner or the onset of a serious chronic condition, and by negative economic shocks such as job loss or the reduction of pension benefits. It is conceivable that the impact of such...

We use a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of election to political office on natural lifespan. In contrast to previous findings of shortened lifespan among US presidents and other heads of state, we find that US governors and other political office holders live over...

The extent to which physical functioning limitations result in permanent job loss, lowered lifetime income and assets, in part, depends upon the extent to which onset of these limitations becomes permanent. This paper uses five rounds of data from Malawi to examine path dependence in physical...