Health status and time allocation in Spain

Abstract

This article analyses the relationship between health status and the time devoted to both market and nonmarket work by individuals responding to the Spanish Time Use Survey 2002-2003. We find that better health of individuals is associated with an increase in the hours of market work, while reducing the time devoted to nonmarket work. We show that OLS estimations yield biased results, and the use of instrumental variables (IV) is needed to deal with endogeneity issues.

Health inequality and the uses of time for workers in Europe: policy implications

“…Those who enjoy their work will downplay their health problems and work longer, while those who dislike their work may exaggerate health problems and retire sooner. Several studies have confirmed the endogeneity of self-reported health measures (Chirikos and Nestel, 1984;Anderson and Burkhauser, 1985;Bazzoli, 1985;Bound, 1991;Haveman et al 1994;Gimenez-Nadal and Ortega, 2013).…”

“…By examining data from several countries, our work crucially adds to the study of the relationship between health inequality and time allocation decisions, including the most recent work by Podor and Halliday (2012), Ortega (2013), andMolina (2015). Specifically, we are able to improve our understanding of how better self-reported health status relates to market and non-market work activities, leisure, and personal care for workers in European countries.…”

“…The CTUR team has recoded the categories to include the following values: 'very poor/poor health' (1), 'fair health' (2), 'good health' (3), and 'very good health' (4). The availability of information on health in the surveys leaves us with the following countries: France (1998), Germany Although SAHS measures are increasingly common in empirical research (Deaton and Paxson, 1998;Ettner, 1996;Podor andHalliday, 2012, Gimenez-Nadal andOrtega, 2013;Gimenez-Nadal and Molina, 2015), the literature has identified a number of reasons why self-reported measures of health status may cause biases (e.g. Bound, 1991;Banks and Smith, 2012), as individuals may use health as a justification for leaving the labour force early.…”

“…Podor and Halliday (2012) analyse the relationship between health and time allocation in the USA and find that better health is associated with large positive effects on home production, and similarly large positive effects on market production, but with lower consumption of leisure. Gimenez-Nadal and Ortega (2013) analyse the relationship between health status and the time devoted to both market and non-market work in Spain and find that better health is associated with an increase in the hours of market work and a decrease in the time devoted to non-market work. Gimenez-Nadal and Molina (2015) analyse the relationship between health status and the time devoted to different uses for a sample of working and non-working individuals in six European countries and find that a better perception of own health is associated with less time devoted to sleep, personal care, and non-market work, for both men and women, and with less time in leisure for men, while it is associated with more time in market work for both men and women.…”

Determinants and impact of role-related time use allocation on self-reported health among married men and women: a cross-national comparative study

“…This unequal distribution of unpaid work is evident even among women who earn signi cantly higher wages than their husbands [16]. There is also extensive literature suggesting that cross-national differences in institutional policies may in uence the gendered patterns of time allocation [18][19][20][21][22], and thus the gendered disparities in health. Whilst this study does not aim to provide further evidence on this aspect, it is important to note that institutional policies play a role in determining the time-speci c allocation of men and women by either increasing or decreasing the cost and time devoted to unpaid housework, childcare and paid work [12,13,24].…”