key topic
Health and well-being
Healthier workforces are more productive but how does the working environment impact on employees’ health? What can employers and policymakers do to ensure the well-being of their workforce?
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The complex effects of retirement on health
Retirement offers the potential for improved health, yet also creates the risk of triggering bad health behavior
Andreas Kuhn, March 2018Retirement offers the opportunity to give up potentially risky, unhealthy, and/or stressful work, which is expected to foster improvements in retirees’ health. However, retirement also bears the risk that retirees suffer from the loss of daily routines, physical and/or mental activity, a sense of identity and purpose, and social interactions, which may lead them to adopt unhealthy behaviors. Depending on the relative importance of the different mechanisms, retirement may either improve or cause a deterioration of retirees’ health, or eventually have no effect on it at all.MoreLess -
The economics of mental health
With modern psychological therapy, mentally ill people can become more productive and more satisfied with life
Richard Layard, January 2017In a typical country, one in five people suffers from a mental illness, the great majority from depression or crippling anxiety. Mental illness accounts for half of all illness up to age 45 in rich countries, making it the most prevalent disease among working-age people; it also accounts for close to half of disability benefits in many countries. Mentally ill people are less likely to be employed and, if employed, more likely to be out sick or working below par. If mentally ill people received treatment so that they had the same employment rate as the rest of the population, total employment would be 4% higher, adding many billions to national output.MoreLess -
Do schooling reforms improve long-term health?
It is difficult to find consistent evidence that schooling reforms provide health benefits
David Madden, October 2016A statistical association between more education and better health outcomes has long been observed, but in the absence of experimental data researchers have struggled to find a causal effect. Schooling reforms such as raising school leaving age, which have been enacted in many countries, can be viewed as a form of natural experiment and provide a possible method of identifying such an effect. However, the balance of evidence so far is that these reforms have had little impact on long-term health. Thus, policymakers should be cautious before anticipating a health effect when introducing reforms of this nature.MoreLess -
The relationship between recessions and health
Economic recessions seem to reduce overall mortality rates, but increase suicides and mental health problems
Nick Drydakis, August 2016Recessions are complex events that affect personal health and behavior via various potentially opposing mechanisms. While recessions are known to have negative effects on mental health and lead to an increase in suicides, it has been proven that they reduce mortality rates. A general health policy agenda in relation to recessions remains ambiguous due to the lack of consistency between different individual- and country-level approaches. However, aggregate regional patterns provide valuable information, and local social planners could use them to design region-specific policy responses to mitigate the negative health effects cause by recessions.MoreLess -
Health effects of job insecurity
Job insecurity adversely affects health, but fair workplace practices and employee participation can mitigate the effects
Francis Green, December 2015Research has shown that job insecurity affects both mental and physical health, though the effects are lower when employees are easily re-employable. The detrimental effects of job insecurity can also be partly mitigated by employers allowing greater employee participation in workplace decision-making in order to ensure fair procedures. But as job insecurity is felt by many more people than just the unemployed, the negative health effects during recessions are multiplied and extend through the majority of the population. This reinforces the need for more effective, stabilising macroeconomic policies.MoreLess -
Sports, exercise, and labor market outcomes
Increasing participation in sports and exercise can boost productivity and earnings
Michael Lechner, February 2015A productive workforce is a key objective of public economic policy. Recent empirical work suggests that increasing individual participation in sports and exercise can be a major force for achieving this goal. The productivity gains and related increase in earnings come on top of the already well-documented public health effects that have so far provided the rationale for the major national and international campaigns to increase individual physical activity. The deciding issue for government policy is whether there are externalities, information asymmetries, or other reasons that lead individuals to decide on activity levels that are too low from a broader social perspective.MoreLess
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November 03, 2017 - November 04, 2017
IZA Workshop on Health and Labor Markets
IZA, Bonn