Working and disability expectancies at old ages: the role of childhood circumstances and education

Angelo Lorenti, Christian Dudel, Jo M. Hale and Mikko Myrskylä
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Angelo Lorenti: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Christian Dudel: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Jo M. Hale: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany
Mikko Myrskylä: Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

No WP-2020-006, MPIDR Working Papers from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany

Abstract: The ability to work at older ages depends on health and education. Both accumulate starting very early in life. We assess how childhood disadvantages combine with education to affect working and health trajectories. Applying multistate period life tables to data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) for the period 2008-2014, we estimate how the residual life expectancy at age 50 is distributed in number of years of work and disability, by number of childhood disadvantages, gender, and race/ethnicity. Our findings indicate that number of childhood disadvantages is negatively associated with work and positively with disability, irrespective of gender and race/ethnicity. Childhood disadvantages intersect with low education resulting in shorter lives, and redistributing life years from work to disability. Among the highly educated, health and work differences between groups of childhood disadvantage are small. Combining multistate models and inverse probability weighting, we show that the return of high education is greater among the most disadvantaged.

Keywords: USA; disability; early childhood; education; ethnicity; length of working life; Markov chains (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 Z0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:dem:wpaper:wp-2020-006

DOI: 10.4054/MPIDR-WP-2020-006

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