Health is distributed unequally by occupation. Workers on a lower rung of the occupational ladder report worse health, have a higher probability of disability and die earlier than workers higher up the occupational hierarchy. Using a theoretical framework that unveils some of the potential mechanisms underlying these disparities, three core insights emerge: (i) there is selection into occupation on the basis of initial wealth, education, and health, (ii) there will be behavioural responses to adverse working conditions, which can have compensating or reinforcing effects on health, and (iii) workplace conditions increase health inequalities if workers with initially low socioeconomic status choose harmful occupations and don’t offset detrimental health effects. We provide empirical illustrations of these insights using data for the Netherlands and assess the evidence available in the economics literature.

Higher cost sharing for seriously ill and low-income patients could discourage treatment of vulnerable populations and create substantial downstream costs.

Health is well known to show a clear gradient by occupation. While it may appear evident that occupation can affect health, there are multiple possible sources of selection that can generate a strong association, other than simply a causal effect of occupation on health. We link job characteristics to German panel data spanning 29 years to characterize occupations by their physical and psychosocial burden. Employing a dynamic model to control for factors that simultaneously affect health and selection into occupation, we find that selection into occupation accounts for at least 60 percent of the association. The effects of occupational characteristics such as physical strain and low job control are negative and increase with age: late-career exposure to one year of high physical strain and low job control is comparable to the average health decline from ageing 16 and 6 months, respectively.

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We investigate whether later educational tracking reduced the intergenerational persistence of socioeconomic disparities in mortality in Finland, where the tracking age was raised from 11 to 16 in the 1970s. We use a difference-in-differences approach that exploits the gradual rollout of the reform. We find that late tracking did reduce disparities in mortality around the age of 50 by parental income for men. However, the longevity gains of men from low-income families seem to have come at the cost of increased mortality among men who grew up in high-income families. This raises questions about the welfare implications of the reform. Terms of use: Documents in

Physical frailty and sarcopenia (PF&S) has received growing attention in empirical models of health care use. However, few articles focused on objective measures of PF&S to assess the extent of care consumption among the frail population at risk of dependency. Using baseline data from the SPRINTT study, a sample of 1,518 elderly people aged 70+ recruited in eleven European countries, we analyse the association between various PF&S measures and health care / long term care (LTC) use. Multiple health care and LTC outcomes are modelled using linear probability models adjusted for a range of individual characteristics and country fixed effects. We find that PF&S is associated with a significant increase in emergency admissions and hospitalizations, especially among low-income elders. All PF&S measures are significantly associated with increased use of formal and informal LTC. There is a moderating effect of income on LTC use: poor frail elders are more likely to use any of the formal LTC services than rich frail elders. Our results are robust to various statistical specifications. They suggest that the inclusion of PF&S in the eligibility criteria of public LTC allowances could

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Predictive process monitoring aims to produce early warnings of unwanted events. We consider the use of the machine learning method extreme gradient boosting as the forecasting model in predictive monitoring. A tuning algorithm is proposed as the signaling method to produce a required false alarm rate. We demonstrate the procedure using a unique data set on mental health in the Netherlands. The goal of this application is to support healthcare workers in identifying the risk of a mental health crisis in people diagnosed with schizophrenia. The procedure we outline offers promising results and a novel approach to predictive monitoring.