The Effect of Income on Mortality—new Evidence for the Absence of a Causal Link

Abstract

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. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We analyze the effect of income on mortality in Austria using administrative social security data. To tackle potential endogeneity concerns arising in this context, we estimate timeinvariant firm-specific wage components and use them as instruments for actual wages. While we do find quantitatively small yet statistically significant effects in our naïve least squares estimations, IV regressions reveal a robust zero-effect of income on ten-year death rates for prime-age workers, both in terms of coefficient magnitude and statistical significance. These results are robust to a number of different sample specifications and both linear and non-linear estimation methods. JEL Classification:J14, J31, I10

Exploring variations in health‐care expenditures—What is the role of practice styles?

“…In each panel, we compare the mean residual fees of movers moving up or down the GP fixed effect distribution to the residual fees of movers who stay within their fixed effect quartile (e.g., 1 to 1, 2 to 2, and so on). In the absence of exogenous mobility, we expect upward movers to already have higher doctors' fees than those who move within the same GP fixed effect quartile and vice versa (see also Ahammer, Horvath, and Winter-Ebmer ;. However, this is not what we see.…”

How Does Delayed Retirement Affect Mortality and Health?

“…Furthermore, the literature has found little evidence of a causal effect of income on mortality (e.g. Lindahl 2005;Snyder and Evans 2006;Schnalzenberger 2011;Ahammer et al 2017). Third, Zulkarnain (2015) and Zulkarnain and Mastrogiacomo (2017) show that the policy increased labor force participation.…”

“…Table 5a shows the OLS results from a model where the dependent variable is an indicator for whether a person was 24 While the positive correlation between income and longevity has been well documented (e.g. Kitagawa and Hauser 1973;Deaton and Paxton 1998;Chetty et al 2016), the literature has either found no causal effect of income on mortality (Lindahl 2005;Schnalzenberger 2011;Ahammer et al 2017) or a small negative effect (Snyder and Evans 2006).…”

The Health Externalities of Downsizing

“…This results in greater resistance which requires the heart to use more force in pumping blood. Lindahl (2005), for example, documents positive effects of lottery earnings on health, while Ahammer et al (2017) show that there is no causal relationship between labor income and mortality. Snyder & Evans (2006) even find that higher social security payments lead to higher mortality.…”