There is an increasing interest among social scientists in merging survey data with administrative records from social security institutions. Record linkage represents one way to combine different sources using a unique identifier such as the Social Security number. The informed consent of the...

Population Aging poses an evident threat to the financial sustainability of pension systems based on a “pay-as-you-go” (PAYG) scheme. To cope with this threat, pension systems have undergone numerous reforms in many countries in order to keep people longer at work. One crucial element of...

We investigate how nutritional status responded to economic growth in Italy during 1861-1911. By combining household-level data on food consumption with population censuses, we estimate that the incidence of undernutrition decreased by about 10-15 percent between 1881 and 1901. Consumption of...

We investigate the trend and the regional variation in height among German military recruits born during the first half of the nineteenth century. The results show a downturn in height, as in many other parts of Europe and America, particularly substantial for those born at the end of the 1830s....

This paper contributes to the debate on the adequate elicitation of individual risk attitudes in general socio-economic surveys. A multi-item question on the willingness to take risk, a very short form of the DOSPERT scale (Weber et al., 2002) and a series of lottery tasks are compared with...

The biological standard of living in Central Italy at the beginning of the 19th century is analyzed using newly collected data on the height of recruits in the army of the Papal States. The results reveal a decline in height for the cohorts born under French rule (1796–1815). Although this...

Over the past years, the financial situation and the retirement prospects of the so-called babyboomers (people born during the demographic Post-World War II baby-boom) have become source of public concern and has attracted a great deal of attention in the US. In Germany, on the contrary, the...