Health status and labour force participation: evidence from HILDA data

Guyonne Kalb and Lixin Cai

No 130, Econometric Society 2004 Australasian Meetings from Econometric Society

Abstract: This paper examines the effect of health on labour force participation using the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. The potential endogeneity of health, especially self-assessed health, in the labour force participation equation is addressed by estimating the health equation and the labour force participation equation simultaneously. Taking into account the correlation between the error terms in the two equations, the estimation is conducted separately for males aged 15 to 49, males aged 50 to 64, females aged 15 to 49 and females aged 50 to 60. The results indicate that better health increases the probability of labour force participation for all four groups. However the effect is larger for the older groups and for women. As for the feedback effect, it is found that labour force participation has a significant positive impact on older females’ health, and a significant negative effect on younger males’ health. For younger females and older males, the impact of labour force participation on health is not significant. The null-hypothesis of exogeneity of health to labour force participation is rejected for all groups.

Keywords: Self-reported health; labour force participation; endogeneity of health; simultaneous equation model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-08-11
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Working Paper: Health Status and Labour Force Participation: Evidence from the HILDA Data (2004)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecm:ausm04:130

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