Gender inequalities in mortality/life expectancy have been a major area of research in the social sciences since the 1970s. However, the questions posed and the research strategies used are still in a state of flux. In the present paper we shed some light on two related questions: (i) Which...

Gender inequalities in longevity/mortality are a major area of research since the 1970s. Despite substantial insights, the questions posed and the research strategies used are still in a state of flux. In the present paper we shed some light on the question, to which extent socioeconomic...

I investigate the effect of income on mortality of the pensioners, com- paring three subsequent policy periods in Austria. The pensioners who retired in the second period received 25% lower pension than those in the first period. This reduction in income was removed in the third policy period....

The red herring hypothesis contends that the high health care expenditure in old age is caused by proximity to death rather than calendar age. Dissenters point to longitudinal data and claim that health care expenditure age profiles tend to steepen over time. The present paper tests the...

In this paper we present empirical results concerning the interplay between the development of dependency in activities for daily living (ADL),the informal support from a partner, and the mode of public old age care (OAC) services among the very old (75+). We also study excess-mortality...

We analyze the effect of economic conditions early in life on individual mortality rate later in life, using business cycle conditions early in life as an exogenous indicator. Individual records from Dutch registers of birth, marriage, and death, covering a window of unprecedented size...

We specify a model for the lifetimes of spouses and the dynamic evolution of health, allowing spousal death to have causal effects on the health and mortality of the survivor. We estimate the model using a longitudinal survey that traces many health status aspects over time, and that is linked...

Understanding of the substantial disparity in health between low and high socioeconomic status (SES) groups is hampered by the lack of a suffciently comprehensive theoretical framework to interpret empirical facts and to predict yet untested relations. We present a life-cycle model that...

While there is no doubt that health is strongly correlated with education, whether schooling exerts a causal impact on health is not yet firmly established. We exploit Dutch compulsory schooling laws in a Regression Discontinuity Design applied to linked data from health surveys, tax files and...

We apply the theory of inequality in opportunity to measure inequity in mortality. Ourempirical work is based on a rich dataset for the Netherlands (1998-2007), linking informationabout mortality, health events and lifestyles. We show that distinguishing between differentchannels via which...