The song “God Part II” on the album “Rattle and Hum” by U2 has the lyrics: “The rich get healthy, while the sick stay poor.” Bono sung those words in 1988. Since then, a number of researchers have tackled what exactly is the link between wealth and health, and why. At first glance, one would expect a simple explanation: people with more money live longer. Clearly such a relationship cannot be strictly linear, as people don’t fall dead if...
By The Economist Intelligence Unit People today are typically living to increasingly older ages. This, however, has created challenges in providing health and social services for burgeoning older populations and governments across the globe have been slow to react. What counts now is how societies can maximise this opportunity and provide efective, inclusive environments in which to age.1 This report from The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is based on findings from the “Scaling Healthy ageing, Inclusive environments and...
By The Economist Intelligence Unit. A 2020 Economist intelligence Unit Study considers policy efforts to addres active and Inclusive ageing in the 19 countries of the G20, based on a custom index that benchmarks each country´s performance across different aspects, including healthy ageing, inclusive environments and fi nance security practices and policies. Source: Ageing Shift
By The Economist Intelligence Unit. A 2020 Economist intelligence Unit Study considers policy efforts to addres active and Inclusive ageing in the 19 countries of the G20, based on a custom index that benchmarks each country´s performance across different aspects, including healthy ageing, inclusive environments and fi nance security practices and policies. Source: Ageing Shift
By Ana Abeliansky, Holger Strulik In this paper, we investigate health and aging before and after retirement for specific occupational groups. We use five waves of the Survey of Health, Aging, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) dataset and construct a frailty index for elderly men and women from 10 European countries. We classify occupation by low vs. high education, blue vs. white collar color, and by high vs. low physical or psychosocial job burden. Controlling for individual fixed effects,...
In a recent study from Singapore, early access to pension wealth was associated with improved health status. The findings are published in Economic Inquiry. Singapore has a unique policy that allows individuals to withdraw a proportion of their pension savings after their 55th birthday, which relaxes individuals' borrowing constraints. To examine its health impacts, investigators analyzed monthly survey data from 2015 to 2019, comparing individuals' self-reported health status before and after their 55th birthday. The results indicated that early...
Women in lower-grade occupations forced to work up to six years longer because of changes to the state pension age are a third more likely to suffer debilitating, potentially permanent, depression, research has found. The changes to the state pension age (SPA) have also resulted in a widening gap in health between women from different occupations, according to a paper by academics at King’s College London. “Our research is important because we know that worsening mental health will lead...
By Alice Zulkarnain (Boston College - Center for Retirement Research), Matthew S. Rutledge (Boston College, Center for Retirement Research) Older Americans have been retiring later for a number of reasons, including jobs that are becoming less physically demanding, the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution pensions, and changes in Social Security’s incentives. What are the implications of working longer for workers’ mortality and health? Answering this question is complicated, because work and health are jointly determined – healthy people...
By Elana D. Buch The troubling dynamic of the American home care industry where increased independence for the elderly conflicts with the well being of caregivers Paid home care is one of the fastest growing occupations in the United States, and millions of Americans rely on these workers to help them remain at home as they grow older. However, the industry is rife with contradictions. The United States spends a fortune on medical care, yet devotes comparatively few resources on improving...
