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Estimates of how health affects employment vary considerably. We assess how different methods and health measures impact estimates of the impact of health on employment using a unified framework for the US and England. We find that subjective and objective health measures, and subjective measures instrumented by objective measures produce similar estimates when using sufficiently rich objective measures. Moreover, a single health index can capture the relevant health variation for employment. Health deterioration explains up to 15% of the decline in employment between ages 50 and 70. Effects are larger for the US than England, and for the low educated.
Authors
CPP Co-Director
Richard is Co-Director of the Centre for the Microeconomic Analysis of Public Policy (CPP) and Senior Research Fellow at IFS.
Deputy Research Director
Monica is a Deputy Research Director and Professor of Economics at the University of Bristol, with an interest in Labour, Family and Public Economics.
CPP Co-Director
Eric is the Montague Burton Professor of Industrial Relations and Labour Economics at the University of Cambridge and Professor of Economics at UCL.
Associate Director
Jack's main interests lie in human capital accumulation and discrete choice dynamic modelling.
Journal article details
- DOI
- 10.3368/jhr.58.3.1217-9240R4
- Publisher
- University of Wisconsin
- Issue
- January 2021
Suggested citation
Blundell, R et al. (2021). 'The impact of health on labour supply near retirement' (2021)
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