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Stability of Life-Satisfaction over Time. Analysis of change in ranks in a national population

Regional Variation and Aging in Health Economics (Dissertation)

Understanding the effect of retirement on health using Regression Discontinuity Design

This paper investigates the mechanisms behind the health effects of retirement. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design to exploit financial incentives in the German pension system for identification, I find that retirement improves subjective health status and mental health, while also reducing outpatient care utilization. I explore a wide range of health behaviors, time use, and effect heterogeneity ...

Exercise at Different Ages and Appendicular Lean Mass and Strength in Later Life: Results From the Berlin Aging Study II

Background. Excessive loss of muscle mass in advanced age is a major risk factor for decreased physical ability and falls. Physical activity and exercise training are typically recommended to maintain muscle mass and prevent weakness. How exercise in different stages of life relates to muscle mass, grip strength, and risk for weakness in later life is not well understood. Methods. Baseline data on ...

Aircraft Noise in Berlin Affects Quality of Life Even Outside the Airport Grounds

Aircraft noise is a particularly problematic source of noise as many airports are located in or near major cities and, as a result, densely populated areas are affected. Data from the Berlin Aging Study II (Berliner Altersstudie II, BASE-II), whose socio-economic module is based on the longitudinal Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) study which has been conducted since 1984, allows us to examine the effect ...

Associations between Neighborhood Characteristics, Well-Being and Health Vary over the Life Course

Background: Neighborhood characteristics are important determinants of individual health and well-being. For example, characteristics such as noise and pollution affect health directly, while other characteristics affect health and well-being by either providing resources (e.g. social capital in the neighborhood), which individuals can use to cope with health problems, or limiting the use thereof (e.g. ...

Add-On Premiums Increase Price Transparency - More Policy Holders Switch Health Plans

The German health care reform implemented in 2009 led to a considerable increase in price transparency within the statutory health insurance (SHI) (Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung, GKV) system and also made it more consumer-friendly which, in turn, has encouraged policy holders to react to price hikes by switching to a different health insurance fund ("sickness fund"). In 2009, the government ...

Analyzing Regional Variation in Health Care Utilization Using (Rich) Household Microdata

This paper exploits rich SOEP microdata to analyze state-level variation in health care utilization in Germany. Unlike most studies in the field of the Small Area Variation (SAV) literature, our approach allows us to net out a large array of individual-level and state-level factors that may contribute to the geographic variation in health care utilization. The raw data suggest that state-level hospitalization ...

Examining the structure of spatial health effects in Germany using Hierarchical Bayes Models

This paper makes use of Hierarchical Bayes Models to model and estimate spatial health effects. We focus on Germany, combining rich individual-level household panel data with administrative county–level information to estimate spatial county-level health dependencies. As dependent variable, we use the generic, continuous, and quasi-objective SF12 health measure. Our findings reveal strong and highly ...

How Big is the Gig? Assessing the Preliminary Evidence on the Effects of Digitalization on the Labor Market