The causal effect of income on health: Evidence from German reunification

Discovering complex interrelationships between socioeconomic status and health in Europe: A case study applying Bayesian Networks

“…Although other studies have focused on describing specific associations between concrete variables and/or the intensity of these relationships in specific countries (Wilkinson and Marmot, 2003;Bartley et al, 2004;Adams et al, 2003a;Frijters et al, 2005;Wilkinson, 1996Wilkinson, , 1997Nummela et al, 2007;Costa-Font and Hernandez-Quevedo, 2012;Eikemo et al, 2008a,b;Kunst et al, 2005), the present work is aimed at providing a general framework to understand the multiple association processes that can emerge from the complex interrelationship of these factors. In fact, compared to standard studies, the biggest advantage of this methodological approach is its strength in graphically clarifying and mapping the most probable paths of relationships from a multi-dependent perspective, where variables can automatically be detected as a cause (independent) and/or an effect (dependent) depending on the internal structure of data.…”

“…Evidence has revealed that the higher the socioeconomic status (SES), the lower the prevalence of health problems, illness, disease and death (Wilkinson and Marmot, 2003;Bartley et al, 2004). The connection between SES and self-rated health (SRH) varies in degree in different countries (Adams et al, 2003a;Frijters et al, 2005). Income, education, occupational and class inequalities vary from one country to another and these socioeconomic determinants could lead to different health outcomes (Wilkinson, 1996(Wilkinson, , 1997Nummela et al, 2007;Costa-Font and Hernandez-Quevedo, 2012).…”

Changing health inequalities in Germany from 1994 to 2008 between employed and unemployed adults

“…The GSOEP population is regularly updated with new survey samples to reflect changes in the German population. The data has previously been used to analyse socioeconomic inequalities in health (Frijters et al 2005;Nolte and McKee 2004;Rodriguez 2002). GSOEP is approved to be in accordance with the high standards for lawful data protection in the Federal Republic of Germany.…”

“…Finally, we estimated fixed effects logistic models (also known as conditional logistic regression models) with the same specifications. This modelling method has been used previously to assess the causal effect of income on health satisfaction (Frijters et al 2005). In contrast to common logistic regression models that are fitting population-averaged effects for panel data, fixed effects models estimate average effects on the individual level while controlling for unobserved variable-bias between the respondents (Chamberlain 1980;Hosmer and Lemeshow 2000;Wooldridge 2010).…”

Identification of treatment effects in Health Economics

“…Broader macroeconomic shocks may be helpful as well. Frijters et al (2005) use the reunification of Germany in 1990 and Jensen and Richter (2004) use the 1996 crisis in the public pension system in Russia. In contrast to Jensen and Richter (2004), Duflo (2000) uses a positive economic shock associated with public pension provision for black African women at the end of the Apartheid era in the early 1990s.…”