A random life expectancy and a positive relationship between the probability of dying and the degree of addiction are incorporated into a rational addiction model. The Becker-Murphy equality between the addictive commodity's full price and marginal utility is modified by discounting the market...

This research investigates the problems of the working poor who are limited by health, drug abuse, alcoholism, or other serious personal handicaps, like blindness. From 1985 to 1995, one third of working poor young baby boomers had at least one of these major limitations. More importantly,...

In this paper we measure the degree of socio economic inequality in both mental health and general health for the Catalan population. We find that income is the main contributor to inequality, especially in the case of mental health. The regional variations in both health measures are striking,...

We evaluate the influence that employment promotion measures and labour market intermediation services addressed to disabled individuals have on the latter’s quality of the job match through the use of matching analysis techniques. Our focus is placed on two aspects of quality: the type of...

This study examines labour supply responses to spousal sickness absence (SSA) using a Swedish longitudinal panel data, from 1996-2002. The overall results present an evidence of a decrease in labour supply in response to spousal sickness absence. The effect on labour supply increases with...

The issue considered in this study is whether objective, official reports on disability status are reliable. While there is a rather large literature on the reliability of self-reported disability, evidence regarding objective data is scant. It seems to be a widely held view among researchers...

In considering the economic impacts of climatic changes, economists frequently use annual national income as a proxy for social welfare. I show that such studies suffer from a significant bias, arising from the fact that such models typically ignore changes in mortality rates. Using panel data...

We use the Vietnam War draft avoidance behavior documented by Card and Lemieux (2001) as a quasi-natural experiment to infer causation from education to smoking and find strong evidence that education, whether measured in years of completed schooling or in educational attainment categories,...

The paper analyses the agricultural policy of the Habyarimana regime, which ruled Rwanda from 1973 to 1994. Econometric analysis of rural household survey data is used to investigate the effects of the 1989 crop failure in southern Rwanda on children’s health status. The paper shows that...

Priority setting and resource allocation across various health care functions is a critical issue in health policy and strategic decision making. As health resources are limited while there are so many health challenges to resolve, consumers and payers have to make difficult decisions about...