Using longitudinal data, this paper investigates the penalty for excess weight in the Swedish labor market, distinguishing between the productivity and the discrimination hypotheses. We analyze employment, income, and sickness absence , using the latter as a direct measure of productivity. We...

This study uses the Swedish register of prescribed drugs, merged with the Survey of Living Conditions (the ULF), to analyze the socioeconomic gradient in drug utilization. It finds a significant education gradient (but no income gradient) in individual drug utilization. Whereas the education...

Body-mass index (BMI), sometimes calculated from objectively measured and sometimes from self-reported weight and height, has become the standard proxy for obesity in social science research. This study deals with the potential problems related to, first, relying on self-reported weight and...

The concentration index and decomposition analysis are commonly used in economics to measure and explain socioeconomic inequalities in health. Such analysis builds on the strong assumption that a health production function can be estimated without substantial bias implying that health is caused...

Self-reported data on utilization of health care is a key input into a range of studies. However, the length of the recall period in self-reported health care questions varies between surveys and this variation may affect the results of the studies. While longer recall periods include more...

What change in the distribution of a population's health preserves the level of inequality? The answer to this analogous question in the context of income inequality lies somewhere between a uniform and a proportional change. These polar positions represent the absolute and relative inequality...

The health care systems in the Nordic countries are facing key challenges. While the possibilities and willingness to expand health care resources are limited, the demand for health care are increasing due to continuous development of new medical technologies, changing demographics, increasing...

This paper provides an extensive analysis of the demand for alcohol in terms of total quantity and quantity subdivided into frequency and intensity demand. The analysis compares across alcohol types (beer, wine and spirits), alcohol drinking pattern (average drinker vs. binge drinkers) and also...

Decomposition of a bivariate rank dependent index, such as the concentration index, is commonly used to explain socioeconomic inequalities in health. We introduce a new decomposition technique based on the recentered influence function that yields the marginal effects of covariates on the...

This study investigates the impact of childhood health on labor market outcomes. We used type 1 diabetes as an instrument of health because its cause is multifactorial and it is triggered by a complex combination of genetic and environmental components; its incidence is low and unforeseeable for...