The joint effect of health shocks and eligibility for social security on labor supply

Candon, D. ORCID: 0000-0002-6395-8828, 2019. The joint effect of health shocks and eligibility for social security on labor supply. European Journal of Health Economics, 20 (7), pp. 969-988. ISSN 1618-7598

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Abstract

This paper investigates whether or not suffering a health shock, and becoming eligible for social security, have a joint effect on labor supply. Despite millions of people experiencing both of these events each year, no paper has focused exclusively on the joint effect that these events may have on work outcomes. This is surprising given that experiencing a health shock may impact on how a worker responds to becoming eligible for social security. With data from the Health and Retirement Study, I model weekly hours of work as a function of health shocks, social security eligibility, and their interaction. I find that this interaction leads to a 3–4 h reduction in weekly hours of work for men, but has no effect for women. The results are robust to using different work outcomes, age groups, health shock definitions, subgroups, as well as falsification and placebo tests. The results appear to be driven by men who would have had to return to work with impaired health. Policies that promote a more flexible work situation for older men may alleviate these problems in the future.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	European Journal of Health Economics
Creators:	Candon, D.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	September 2019
Volume:	20
Number:	7
ISSN:	1618-7598
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s10198-019-01053-2 DOI 1213476 Other
Divisions:	Schools > Nottingham Business School
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	07 Nov 2019 12:27
Last Modified:	15 May 2020 03:00
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/38142

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