This paper investigates the role of pain in affecting self-reported work disability and employment of elderly workers in the US.We investigate pain and its relationship to work disability and work in a dynamic panel data model, using six biennial waves from the Health and Retirement Study.We...

Differences in answers in Internet and traditional surveys can be due to selection, mode, or context effects. We exploit unique experimental data to analyze mode and context effects controlling for arbitrary selection. The Health and Retirement Study (HRS) surveys a random sample of the US 50+...

Self-reported work disability is analyzed in the US, the UK and the Netherlands.Different wordings of the questions lead to different work disability rates.But even if identical questions are asked, crosscountry differences remain substantial.Respondent evaluations of work limitations of...

Comparing self-assessed indicators of subjective outcomes such as health, work disability, political efficacy, job satisfaction, etc. across countries or socio-economic groups is often hampered by the fact that different groups use systematically different response scales. Anchoring vignettes...

Recent economic research on international comparisons of subjective well-being suffers from several important biases due to the potential incomparability of response scales within and across countries. In this paper we concentrate on self-reported satisfaction with income in two countries: The...

Euler equation estimation of intertemporal consumption models requires many, often unverifiable assumptions. These include assumptions on expectations and preferences. We aim at reducing some of these requirements by using direct subjective information on respondents’ preferences and...

Many western industrialized countries face strong budgetary pressures due to the aging of the baby boom generations and the general trends toward earlier ages of retirement. We use the American PSID and the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) to explain differences in prevalence and...

To analyze the effect of health on work, many studies use a simple self-assessed health measure based upon a question such as "do you have an impairment or health problem limiting the kind or amount of work you can do?" A possible drawback of such a measure is the possibility that different...

To analyze the effect of health on work, many studies use a simple self-assessed health measure based upon a question such as "do you have an impairment or health problem limiting the kind or amount of work you can do?" A possible drawback of such a measure is the possibility that different...

Self-reported work disability is analyzed in the US and The Netherlands. The raw data show that Dutch respondents much more often report that they have a work limiting health problem than respondents in the US. The difference remains when controlling for demographic characteristics and observed...