Legislation in the 1970s created a Notch in social security payments, with those born after January 1, 1917, receiving sharply lower benefits. Using restricted-use versions of the National Mortality Detail File combined with Census data, we use this quasi experiment to examine the income mortality link in an elderly population. Estimates from difference-in-difference and regression discontinuity models show the higher-income group has a statistically significantly higher mortality rate, contradicting the previous literature. We also found that younger cohorts responded to lower incomes by increasing postretirement work effort, suggesting that moderate employment has beneficial health effects for the elderly. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

There is widespread and longstanding agreement that life expectancy and income are positively correlated. However, it has proven much more difficult to establish a causal relationship since income and health are jointly determined. We use a major change in the Social Security law as exogenous variation in income to examine the impact of income on mortality in an elderly population. The legislation created a "notch" in Social Security benefits based upon date of birth; those born before January 1, 1917 generally receive higher benefits than those born afterwards. We compare mortality rates after age 65 for males born in the second half of 1916 and the first half of 1917. Data from restricted-use versions of the National Mortality Detail File combined with Census data allows us to count all deaths among elderly Americans between 1979 and 1993. We find that the higher income group has a statistically significantly higher mortality rate, contradicting the previous literature. We also find that the younger cohort responded to lower incomes by increasing post-retirement work effort. These results suggest that moderate employment has beneficial health effects for the elderly.

No abstract

No abstract

Aristotle"s model of nous is the prototype of Hegel"s absolute. The ahistorical concept of nous found in Aristotle"s De Anima takes on the dimension of historical development in Hegel"s idealistic notion of the Absolute. As I aim to show, Aristotle"s differentiation of passive intellect (nous pathetikos), which is imaginative and perishable, and the agent and possible intellects (nous poitikos, and nous dunamei), which are separable and eternal, reemerges in Hegel"s account of absolute spirit"s sublation of the sensuous images of art into the purer form of philosophy. And as Aristotle"s passive intellect or imagination ends in the death of the individual, so spirit"s manifestation in art ends, when its task is complete.Following the lead of the German aesthetic tradition, Hegel defines art as a transitory mode of mind that fulfills its purpose by aiding in the achievement of the higher, purer cognition of philosophy. When the unfolding concept of mind becomes too complex for articulation in the material, art must end, and spirit"s message can be expressed only through the non-material form of philosophy. In Lectures on Fine Art, Hegel tells a story of art that unfolds in necessary dialectical steps. As Aristotle held that the poet tells the story of history with the addition of a plot, Hegel cannot envision the story of art without a unifying meaning. Thus, at the end of art"s story, art dissolves the dialectical process. Art will go on, but as a shadow of what it was when art served the highest purpose of spirit"s needs. The spirit of art (subjektiv Begriff) passes its essence on to philosophy, the only remaining medium of the Absolute able to articulate the essence of the mature Concept.The advantage of Hegel"s appropriating the structure of Aristotle"s conception of nous is evident in the ability of his aesthetic theory to account for substantial changes in the form and function of art as it changes historically. As well, it explains how historical shifts in the morphology of art are indexed through the truths significant to a historical epoch. This shows that the significance of the work is not to be found in the form of the work alone. On the other hand, the notion of art that Hegel adopts is oriented toward the determinate actualization of objective consciousness in the Absolute, not the practical effects that works of art can have on guiding the individual to right action, as Aristotle"s theory intended.The independence of philosophy. Hegel argues, in Lectures on the History of Philosophy, that the history of philosophy is not a topic that refers to past history, as an archaeologist might view a dig, dredging up the relics of antiquity for the sake of learning how a now dead culture may have lived. Quite to the contrary, philosophy survives the thinker, and the topics revealed by past philosophers are very much active and alive today.