Emily Johnson

What is the title of your thesis?

Beyond the Aggregate: Premature Mortality and the Income Burden of Disease in Denmark.

At which department and/or research unit did you complete your PhD?

Danish Centre for Health Economics, Institut for Sundhedstjenesteforskning.

Who was your principal supervisor?

Professor Angela Chang, Department of Public Health.

What question did you aim to answer with your thesis?

Which groups lose the most income to illness in Denmark, and who is most at risk of dying young (age 50-70), once you look past national averages?

What did you find?

Breast cancer costs the average patient €7,138 in income over 10 years, but young women and people still in school lose far more. Mental illness costs much more than physical illness: 10 years after diagnosis, someone with depression has 11.5% lower income and alcohol use disorder 9.3%, against 3.4% for stroke and 0.6% for breast cancer.

And who dies young in Denmark is predictable: health and healthcare use explain most of the gap between early deaths and survivors, though income and job status matter more for younger men.

How did you do it?

I used Danish register data covering the full population. For the income studies, I matched all people with a diagnosis to similar people without one and tracked their income over 10 years.

For premature mortality, I trained machine learning models on over 300 health, economic, and social factors, then used an economic decomposition method to break down what drives the risk gap between people who die young and people who don't.

How can your research be applied (in the clinic, society, etc.)?

Policymakers can use evidence like this thesis to allocate resources effectively: economic supports to individuals who lose income after a diagnosis, and targeted health intervention for those at highest risk of early death or disproportionate income impacts.