The history of the support by society of the aged is discussed in cross cultural and historical context. Various cultural traditions are compared with the forms developed in complex societies from ancient Egypt and Greece and Rome, to China, the Aztec, Inca and Maya, to those of religious...

The Coronavirus pandemic has raised questions about public health system fragility or lack of health phronesis (practical wisdom). The UK is one of the unhealthiest developed nations on the planet with over 35% of its population projected to be obese by 2025. Notwithstanding, local sports...

The Productivity Commission inquiry report — Disability Care and Support — was released on 10 August 2011. Current disability support arrangements are inequitable, underfunded, fragmented, and inefficient and give people with a disability little choice. They provide no certainty that people...

The UK introduced its first nationwide programme of sickness benefits in 1948. It initially cost around £2 billion per year in today’s prices. The UK now spends over £37 billion annually on various disability-related benefits, a figure which is still rising. More than 5 million people are in...

Two of the most important health risk factors for children and young adults are obesity and alcohol use. These risk factors are known to affect health and wellbeing, but may also have an impact on educational outcomes. The objective of this study was to assess a potential causal relationship...

This paper investigates how changes in hospital choice sets affect levels of patient demand for elective hospital care. We exploit a set of reforms in England that opened up the market for publicly-funded patients to private hospitals. Impacts on demand are estimated using variation in distance...

Using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for 1997-2013 and difference-in-differences (DD) and difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) techniques, we estimate the effects of minimum wages on absence from work due to own and others' (such as children's) illnesses. We...

Social health care systems around the world are inevitably confronted with the scarcity of resources and the resulting distributional challenges. Prioritization is applied in almost all countries, implicitly or explicitly, and shapes access to health services. We analyze and compare attitudes...

Objectives. Social health inequalities remain a key policy challenge. The existing literature has not presented a synthetic view on the evolution of inequalities in physical development across childhood. We examine social disparities as children grow older using a range of different...

This paper examines the health impact of UK pension reforms that increased women's State Pension age for up to six years since 2010. Exploiting an 11% increase in employment caused by the reforms, we show that rising the State Pension age reduces physical and mental health among women from...