In this paper we use the two waves of the British Retirement Survey (1988/1989 and 1994) to quantify the relationship between socioeconomic status and health outcomes. We find that, even after conditioning on the initial health status, wealth rankings are important determinants of mortality and the evolution of the health indicator in the survey. For men aged 65 moving from the 40th percentile to the 60th percentile in the wealth distribution increases the probability of survival by between 1.0 and 1.9 percentage points depending on the measure of wealth used. A similar effect is found for women of between 1.1 and 1.3 percentage points. In the process of estimating these effects we control for nonrandom attrition from our sample.
Authors
![Carl Emmerson](/sites/default/files/styles/square_desktop/public/2022-06/Carl_Emmerson.jpg?itok=6jM06LTY)
Carl Emmerson
Deputy Director
Carl, a Deputy Director, is an editor of the IFS Green Budget, is expert on the UK pension system and sits on the Social Security Advisory Committee.
![Orazio Attanasio](/sites/default/files/styles/square_desktop/public/2022-06/Orazio_Attanasio.jpg?itok=Anbs4JXx)
Orazio Attanasio
Research Fellow
Orazio is an International Research Fellow at the IFS, a Professor at Yale and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Journal article details
- Publisher
- MIT Press
- ISSN
- 1542-4766
- Issue
- June 2003
Suggested citation
Attanasio, O and Emmerson, C. (2003). 'Mortality, health status and wealth' (2003)
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