The causal effect of income on health: Evidence from German reunification

Paul Frijters; John P. Haisken-DeNew; Michael A. Shields

doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2005.01.004

The causal effect of income on health: Evidence from German reunification

Paul Frijters, John P. Haisken-DeNew, Michael A. Shields^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

255 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We investigate whether there was a causal effect of income changes on the health satisfaction of East and West Germans in the years following reunification. Our data source is the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) between 1984 and 2002, and we fit a recently proposed fixed-effects ordinal estimator to our health measures and use a causal decomposition technique to account for panel attrition. We find evidence of a significant positive effect of income changes on health satisfaction, but the quantitative size of this effect is small. This is the case with respect to current income and a measure of 'permanent' income.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	997-1017
Number of pages	21
Journal	Journal of Health Economics
Volume	24
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2005.01.004
Publication status	Published - Sept 2005

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10.1016/j.jhealeco.2005.01.004

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title = "The causal effect of income on health: Evidence from German reunification",

abstract = "We investigate whether there was a causal effect of income changes on the health satisfaction of East and West Germans in the years following reunification. Our data source is the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) between 1984 and 2002, and we fit a recently proposed fixed-effects ordinal estimator to our health measures and use a causal decomposition technique to account for panel attrition. We find evidence of a significant positive effect of income changes on health satisfaction, but the quantitative size of this effect is small. This is the case with respect to current income and a measure of 'permanent' income.",

keywords = "Attrition, German reunification, Health, Income, Panel data",

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T2 - Evidence from German reunification

AU - Frijters, Paul

AU - Haisken-DeNew, John P.

AU - Shields, Michael A.

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Y1 - 2005/9

N2 - We investigate whether there was a causal effect of income changes on the health satisfaction of East and West Germans in the years following reunification. Our data source is the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) between 1984 and 2002, and we fit a recently proposed fixed-effects ordinal estimator to our health measures and use a causal decomposition technique to account for panel attrition. We find evidence of a significant positive effect of income changes on health satisfaction, but the quantitative size of this effect is small. This is the case with respect to current income and a measure of 'permanent' income.

AB - We investigate whether there was a causal effect of income changes on the health satisfaction of East and West Germans in the years following reunification. Our data source is the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) between 1984 and 2002, and we fit a recently proposed fixed-effects ordinal estimator to our health measures and use a causal decomposition technique to account for panel attrition. We find evidence of a significant positive effect of income changes on health satisfaction, but the quantitative size of this effect is small. This is the case with respect to current income and a measure of 'permanent' income.

KW - Attrition

KW - German reunification

KW - Health

KW - Income

KW - Panel data

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/23944492693

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DO - 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2005.01.004

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VL - 24

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EP - 1017

JO - Journal of Health Economics

JF - Journal of Health Economics

IS - 5

ER -

The causal effect of income on health: Evidence from German reunification

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