Template-type: ReDIF-Paper 1.0
Author-Name: Benzeval, Michaela
Author-Name: Davillas, Apostolos
Author-Name: M. Jones, Andrew
Title: The income-health gradient: evidence from self-reported health and biomarkers using longitudinal data on income
Abstract:  This paper adds to the literature on the income-health gradient by exploring the association of short- and long-term income with a wide set of self-reported health measures and objective nurse-administered and blood-based biomarkers as well as employing estimation techniques that allow for analysis “beyond the mean” and accounting for unobserved heterogeneity. The income-health gradients are greater in magnitude in case of long-run rather than cross- sectional income measures. Unconditional quantile regressions reveal that the differences between the long-run and the short-run income gradients are more evident towards the right tails of the distributions, where both higher risk of illnesses and steeper income gradients are observed. A two-step estimator, involving a fixed-effects income model at the first stage, shows that the individual-specific selection effects have a systematic impact in the long-run income gradients in self-reported health but not in biomarkers, highlighting the importance of reporting error in self-reported health.

Creation-Date: 20170316
Number: 2017-03
Publication-Status: published
File-URL: https://www.iser.essex.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/working-papers/iser/2017-03.pdf
File-Format: Application/pdf
Handle: RePEc:ese:iserwp:2017-03