How should we model health as a dynamic process?
Health is a complex dynamic process that impacts many economic decisions in ways that remain poorly understood. This paper comprehensively reviews how health is modelled in the literature, showing that baseline models typically fail to take into account how persistence and frequency of health shocks vary by past health history and magnitude and direction of past shocks. Methods from the earnings dynamics literature are adapted to produce improved health persistence estimates. This paper also investigates how medical biomarker data can be incorporated in dynamic models of health as a proxy for underlying health. There is significant scope for further work in this area as more medical data becomes available to researchers
Link to latest version of paper: here
Health-driven occupational changes (joint work with Nick Ridpath)
Poor health impacts labour supply in varied and complex ways. This paper examines an under-explored aspect of this relationship: how suffering a health shock affects occupational mobility. Occupational change commonly occurs after health shocks. Individuals are 10-15 per cent more likely to change occupation or employer in subsequent months relative to those who remain healthy. We document how these newly chosen occupations differ from the occupation mobility patterns of the healthy. Those who newly report a physical disability switch to less cognitive and less manual occupations, those who report worsening mental health switch to less cognitive occupations, and those who report a new chronic health condition switch to less manual occupations, relative to their healthy counterparts. Lower cognitive intensity jobs are jobs with lower overall task complexity, while less manual jobs can be more suitable for those with certain health conditions. Individuals who do not hold a degree and report worsening mental health appear to be particularly vulnerable; we observe the largest declines in overall task intensity for this group.
Link to latest version of paper: here
The Consumption Choices of 'Generation Rent'
Header image: Merton College, Oxford (2021). Main page header image credit: Late Afternoon, New York, Winter (1900) by Frederick Hassam