The effect of a negative health information shock on retirement expectations
This paper estimates the effect of a new health information shock on observed retirement behaviour. Identifying this relationship is particularly challenging as it requires that the health shock be exogenous and that we know the timing of this shock. I use survey induced information shock on blood glycated haemoglobin in a regression discontinuity framework to identify the effect of being just above the cutoff for a diabetes diagnosis on actual retirement behaviour. I use biomarker data collected in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) and leverage the fact that respondents were informed of their blood results with an advice to visit their GP if a result was out of normal range. Results indicate that women who were above the cutoff and were advised to visit their GP retire 2 years earlier than women who were below the cutoff. There were no significant effects on men. These results are robust to different bandwidth selections and persist when using covariate adjusted bandwidth selection. This suggests women are more sensitive to health shocks and may be more negatively impacted with the onset of diabetes than men.
People:
Seetha Menon
The Evolution of Individual Probabilistic Survival Expectations in Denmark
Subjective survival expectations play an important role in decision making under uncertainty and has been shown to be predictive of actual survival. While expectations data is increasingly used to predict several aspects of economic behavior, little is known about how individuals form these expectations and whether they updated them in meaningful ways in reaction to new information. This project will examine whether the evolution of an individual’s survival expectation over time is consistent with the occurrence of adverse health events. SHARE data has elicited probabilistic survival expectations in all waves and in all participating countries. The survey also records detailed information on whether an adverse health event took place, and if so exactly when the event took place. Accounting for mortality related sample selection, using a longitudinal fixed effects model, individuals who have experienced one or more adverse health events are anticipated to report lower survival expectations relative to individuals who have not.
Joint work of Leonardo Giuffrida, Giovanni Mellace, Seetha Menon and Franco Peracchi
People:
Giovanni Mellace
Seetha Menon
Social inequality of ageing, retirement and work capacity
The project aims at investigating the work capacity among the elder. Given that the number of elder increases, it is necessary to increase retirement age. However, it is obvious that not all elder can work longer, so that retirement schemes must be offered for elder who are worn out or for other reasons cannot work. The project aims at analyzing the work capacity among elder and to assess the socioeconomic inequality in the ability to work and thus the need for flexible retirement schedules.
People:
Jørgen T. Lauridsen
Maiken Skovrider Aaskoven
Spatial aspects of demography, ageing and health behavior
It is well known that demographic features like ageing varies substantially over regions in Denmark as well as most other countries, alike health and health behavior. The project investigates to which extent spatial variation in these phenomena can be ascribed to systematic observable factors like level of education, employment, age structure, wealth, income, urbanization etc., and to which extent spatial agglomeration plays a role Such agglomeration can come in the form of neighborhood effects, local area deprivation, peer effects etc. A number of studies already performed indicate that such spatial agglomeration plays a significant role for most phenomena.
People:
Jørgen T. Lauridsen
Development in health status of the elderly
The state of health and activities as well as the development therein is important to know when deciding on the official retirement age. The purpose of the study is to describe developments in these conditions since 2004. As data material, we use selected data from SHARE waves 1 - 7 regarding somatic and mental health as well as activities such as labor market participation and social activities are used. In the comparison, five year age groups are used for men and women respectively from 50 years to 79 years of age over the 7 waves. It is our hypothesis that health status and activities have developed in a positive direction. An extended study combines health status at each age level with expected residual life.