Volume 38, Number 2 (Spring) 2003
Hurd, Michael, and Arie Kapteyn. 2003. "Health, Wealth, and the Role of Institutions." Journal of Human Resources 38(2):386-415.
A positive relationship between socioeconomic status and health has been observed over many populations and many time periods. One of the factors mediating this relation is the institutional environment in which people function. We consider longitudinal data from two countries with very different institutional environments. the United States and The Netherlands. To structure the empirical analysis. we develop a theoretical model relating changes in health status to income and changes in income to health status. We show that income or wealth inequality is closely connected with health inequality. We empirically estimate counterparts to the theoretical relationships with generally corroborative results.
Michael D. Hurd and Arie Kapteyn are senior economists at RAND. The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the National Institute on Aging. They thank Megan Beckett for help accessing the literature and two anonymous referees for very helpful comments. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning November 2003 through October 2006 from Dr. Arie Kapteyn, RAND, 1700 Main Street. PO Box 2138. Santa Monica, CA 90407-2139, kapteyn@rand.org .
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X