Please cite this article as: Gupta, P., Mishra, T., O'Leary, N., Parhi, M., The distributional effects of adaption and anticipation to ill health on subjective wellbeing. Economics Letters (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet. 2015.09.010 This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.1 Highlights  adaption to illness differs markedly across the wellbeing distribution  negative illness effects are moderated over time at higher distributional points  illness persists in negatively affecting wellbeing at lower distributional points  there is little evidence of anticipatory effects across the wellbeing distribution Mamata ParhiRoehampton Business School University of Roehampton E-mail: mamata.parhi@roehampton.ac.uk Abstract Adaption and anticipation to reported illness upon subjective wellbeing is analysed across the wellbeing distribution. Anticipation effects are muted, but substantial adaption effects are apparent that differ markedly over the range of wellbeing, being most evident at the upper quartile. This current work sheds light on the temporal impact of illness on SWB but also within the context of its impact across the SWB distribution. The literature already cited has exclusively dealt with `average' effects (by focusing on the mean of the SWB distribution) but the work of Binder and Coad (2011) has motivated a new stream of research which emphasises the whole of the SWB distribution so that the true effects of SWB and its determinants can be ascertained. Indeed, the usefulness of pan-distributional regression techniques can be gauged from theoretical insights in the economicpsychological literature that suggest that life events germinate a kind of brain activity that motivate individuals to score high or low in satisfaction measures to choice behaviour (Kahneman et al., 1993), which often results in skewed or multimodal distributions of well-being (Dieneret al., 2006). KeywordsIn this way, regression methodologies that focus upon means might seriously misrepresent wellbeing responses to illness and a clear result that emergesin our analysis is that adaption and anticipation effects of illness differ measurably across the SWB distribution. DataThe data used are of individuals taken from 18 waves of the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS),anationally-representative survey of households running from 1991-2008. The question used to measure SWB is taken from the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), which was developed as a 3 screening instrument to identify psychological distress in primary care settings. Coded over a 0-36 point Likert scale derived from responses to twelve individu...

Recent literature has provided evidence that a gender and caste-based wage discrimination can exert negative economic impact on a country's development process. Given the enormous contribution of young population to India's workforce, we examine whether there is any caste-based discrimination considering 'demographic' distinction. Using employment and unemployment National Sample Survey data from India for two rounds during the last two decades (1993 and 2010), we find rising wage gap between privileged and marginalized groups within younger and older cohorts across the distribution and over time. Furthermore, we decompose the wage gap using the counterfactual decomposition into endowment effect (explained by differences in characteristics) and a discrimination effect (attributable to unequal returns to covariates). We find that the discrimination effect against marginalized castes (in both cohorts) decreases, implying an increasing endowment effect across the distribution of the wage gap. This discrimination effect is more pronounced among younger compared to older cohorts.

Does consumption distance as a measure of individual alienation reveal the effect of social identity? Using the central idea of Akerlof's social distance theory, individual distance is calculated from their own group mean (median) consumption and then we examine whether individuals from different social groups-caste and religion-are alienated across the distance distribution. Using India's household-level microdata on consumption expenditure covering three major survey rounds since the inception of the reform period, we find a non-unique pattern in the distance distribution where the marginalised and minority group households tend to be alienated across the distribution. However, among them, the households with higher educational attainment become more integrated as reflected in the interaction effect of education. These results are robust even after controlling for the endogeneity of education. Given this significant group difference in consumption, we undertake a group-level comparison by creating a counterfactual group through exchanging the characteristics of the priviledged group to the marginalised group (or Hindus to non-Hindus), and find that the privileged group still consumes more than the counterfactual marginalised group, explaining around 77% of the estimated average consumption gap at the median quantile in 2011-12 (or 59% for Hindus versus Non-Hindus). This suggests other inherent identity-specific social factors as possible contributors to within-group alienation (relative to a better-off category) that can only be minimised through promoting education for marginalised (or minority religion) groups.

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