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Infant Mortality and Adult Stature in Spain

This paper presents new evidence concerning the relationship between environmental conditions in the year of birth (as reflected in the infant mortality rate (IMR) and gross domestic product per capita) and adult health (adult height). We perform an analysis across Spanish regions for cohorts born between 1961 and 1980, a period when the country underwent a socio-economic and political transformation. ...

Jobless Now, Sick Later? Investigating the Long-Term Consequences of Involuntary Job Loss on Health

In the light of the current economic crises which in many countries lead to business closures and mass lay-offs, the consequences of job loss are important on various dimensions. They have to be investigated not only in consideration of a few years, but with a long-term perspective as well, because early life course events may prove important for later life outcomes. This paper uses data from SHARELIFE ...

Economics of Climate Change: Coping with Shocks in Mongolia – Vulnerability, Assets and Migration (Shocks Mongolia)

This project analyzes the impact of climate shocks on the livelihoods and welfare of households in Mongolia. Our analysis particularly focuses on extreme weather events, locally called dzud disasters (see box below). As a consequence of climate change and global warming, it is very likely that climate shocks, such as dzud, will occur more frequently and with greater intensity. As part of the...

Beyond GDP and Back: What Is the Value-Added by Additional Components of Welfare Measurement?

Recently, building on the highly polarizing Stiglitz report, a growing literature suggests that statistical offices and applied researchers explore other aspects of human welfare apart from material well-being, such as job security, crime, health, environmental factors and subjective perceptions. To explore the additional information of these indicators, we analyze data on the macro level from the ...

Happy House: Spousal Weight and Individual Well-Being

We use life satisfaction and Body Mass Index (BMI) information from three waves of the SOEP to test for social interactions in BMI between spouses. Social interactions require that the cross-partial effect of partner's weight and own weight in the utility function be positive. Using life satisfaction as a utility proxy, semi-parametric regressions show that the correlation between satisfaction and ...

Income and Longevity Revisited: Do High-Earning Women Live Longer?

Noise Expectation and House Prices

In this paper, we examine the effects of an airport expansion on the prices of houses and flats located under the planned flight corridors. We focus on the role of expectations about the exposure to noise and find that proximity to the planned corridors significantly reduces real estate prices in the affected areas, by around 41% to 60%, depending on the sample. Hereby, the various plans of expanding ...

Japanese Welfare State Reforms in the 1990s and Beyond: How Japan is Similar to and Different from Germany

Beginning with a review of Japanese welfare state reform in 1990s, we discuss similarities and differences between Japan and Germany in the implementation of three major reforms: public pension reform, health care reform and introduction of long-term care insurance. The latest public pension reform in both countries has the same aim: to establish middle- and long-term stability of the system against ...

Does Job Satisfaction Improve the Health of Workers? New Evidence Using Panel Data and Objective Measures of Health

This paper evaluates the relationship between job satisfaction and measures of health of workers using the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Methodologically, it addresses two important design problems encountered frequently in the literature: (a) cross-sectional causality problems and (b) absence of objective measures of physical health that complement self-reported measures of health status. Not ...

Obesity and Developmental Functioning Among Children Aged 2-4 Years

In developed countries, obesity tends to be associated with worse labor market outcomes. One possible reason is that obesity leads to less human capital formation early in life. This paper investigates the association between obesity and the developmental functioning of children at younger ages (2-4 years) than ever previously examined. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study are used to ...