An Econometric Analysis of the Mental-Health Effects of Major Events in the Life of Elderly Individuals

Maarten Lindeboom (), France Portrait () and Gerard van den Berg
Additional contact information
France Portrait: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

No 398, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Major events in the life of an elderly individual, such as retirement, a significant decrease in income, death of the spouse, disability, and a move to a nursing home, may affect the mental health status of the individual. For example, the individual may enter a prolonged depression. We investigate this using unique longitudinal panel data that track labor market behavior, health status, and major life events, over time. To deal with endogenous aspects of these events we apply fixed effects estimation methods. We find some strikingly large effects of certain events on the occurrence of depression. We show that the results are of importance for the design of health care and labor market policy towards the elderly.

Keywords: panel data; care; widowhood; health indicators; depression; disease; income loss; retirement; Death; endogeneity; fixed effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C5 I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2001-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: Health Economics, 2002, 11 (6), 505-520

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp398.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: An Econometric Analysis of the Mental-Health Effects of Major Events in the Life of Elderly Individuals (2001)
Working Paper: An Econometric Analysis of the Mental-health Effects of Major Events in the Life of Elderly Individuals (2001)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp398

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().