Economics And Human Biology[JOURNAL]
Sun
200 papers
Health benefits of air pollution reduction: Evidence from economic slowdown in India.
Kyrychenko O
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39454267 · Publisher ↗
This paper evaluates health benefits associated with the impact of air pollution reduction on infant mortality in India. Leveraging plausibly exogenous geographic variation in air pollution due to the post-2010 economic...
This paper evaluates health benefits associated with the impact of air pollution reduction on infant mortality in India. Leveraging plausibly exogenous geographic variation in air pollution due to the post-2010 economic slowdown-a period largely overlooked in the literature-I find that improvements in air quality resulted in a significant decline in infant mortality, particularly through respiratory diseases and biological pathways such as in utero and post-birth exposure. The associated health benefits correspond to 1338 saved infant lives, translating to monetary gains of $312.5 million. The paper advances our understanding of the link between air pollution and human health in settings with elevated air pollution and suboptimal regulatory frameworks.
High temperatures and traffic accident crimes: Evidence from more than 470,000 offenses in China.
Wang M, Zhang S
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39447467 · Publisher ↗
How does climate change affect road safety? This study examines the impacts of high temperatures on the crime of causing traffic casualties based on comprehensive data covering more than 470,000 offenses from verdicts pu...
How does climate change affect road safety? This study examines the impacts of high temperatures on the crime of causing traffic casualties based on comprehensive data covering more than 470,000 offenses from verdicts published by Chinese courts. Using 2014-2018 city-level daily panel data, we find that a day with a daily maximum temperature above 100 °F leads to a significant 11.9 % increase in traffic accident crime compared with days with a mild temperature. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that people aged 45 and above, samples on weekdays, and samples in regions with high population densities are more vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat. More importantly, we find no lagged or cumulative effects and little evidence of adaptation. Finally, by using traffic congestion index data, we observe that drivers can engage in avoidance behavior on hot days, suggesting that our estimates may provide a lower bound on the effect of extreme heat on traffic accident crime.
Social inequalities in adult mortality across Europe (18-21 centuries): A critical analysis of theories and evidence.
Luque de Haro VA
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39442368 · Publisher ↗
This study examines the historical evolution of socioeconomic disparities in adult mortality, with a focus on European societies. Despite the widespread improvements in population health, social inequalities in mortality...
This study examines the historical evolution of socioeconomic disparities in adult mortality, with a focus on European societies. Despite the widespread improvements in population health, social inequalities in mortality are a pervasive phenomenon nowadays. This paper employs a critical analysis of both theoretical and empirical literature to investigate major international studies and their findings on longevity differences associated with socioeconomic status from the nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Findings reveal that adult mortality trajectories have differed notably across social classes and regions, with some areas exhibiting disparities before the demographic transition and others showing inequalities emerging later. Understanding these long-term health inequality trends sheds light on the changing influence of medical advances and their interplay with economic growth, educational disparities, environmental factors, state roles, and production distribution, which have shaped mortality disparities through different development stages. These factors elucidate the international heterogeneity of results until the mid-twentieth century and offer explanatory insights into observed north-south patterns in Europe. Our findings contribute to a deeper understanding of how advancements in public health, economic development, and social policies have shaped health outcomes over centuries. The implications of this research inform ongoing debates and health policy, emphasizing a nuanced interpretation of historical data to craft effective strategies that address health inequalities today.
The fattening speed: Understanding the impact of internet speed on obesity, and the mediating role of sedentary behaviour.
Lin MI, Awaworyi Churchill S, Ackermann K
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39423766 · Publisher ↗
We examine the impact of access to high-speed internet on obesity. Using 14 waves of longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey and a newly constructed dataset on the rol...
We examine the impact of access to high-speed internet on obesity. Using 14 waves of longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey and a newly constructed dataset on the rollout and adoption rate of the National Broadband Network (NBN) across Australian postcodes, we find that access to high-speed internet has a positive effect on obesity. Specifically, our preferred instrumental variable estimates, which predict the variation in timing and location of internet access upgrades, suggest that a 1 % increase in the proportion of a postcode that has access to NBN is associated with a 1.573 increase in Body Mass Index and a 6.6 percentage point increase in the probability of being obese. These results are robust to several checks and alternative specifications. We also find that sedentary behaviour and inactivity are mechanisms through which access to high-speed internet transmits to obesity.
What is the relationship between risk attitudes and ambient temperature? Evidence from a large population-based cohort study.
König AN, Laxy M, Peters A … +4 more , Schneider A, Wolf K, Schwettmann L, Wiesen D
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39366053 · Publisher ↗
Rising temperatures affect human behavior and risk-taking in several domains. However, it is not yet well understood just how ambient temperature shapes risk attitudes. Using data from the large population-based KORA-Fit...
Rising temperatures affect human behavior and risk-taking in several domains. However, it is not yet well understood just how ambient temperature shapes risk attitudes. Using data from the large population-based KORA-Fit study (Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg) of older people (N=2454), we identify a statistically significant, but very small, positive association between short-term ambient temperature changes and individuals' general willingness to take risks. Health-related risk attitudes, however, show no significant relationship with temperature. These findings support a domain-specific view of risk attitudes, with results remaining consistent for vulnerable individuals with the chronic conditions diabetes, hypertension, and asthma. Overall, our findings suggest that risk attitudes are somewhat stable towards changes in ambient temperature.
The role of gene-environment interaction in the formation of risk attitudes.
Groero J
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39357340 · Publisher ↗
Understanding the formation of risk preferences is crucial for elucidating the roots of economic, social, and health inequalities. However, this area remains inadequately explored. This study employs a risk preference me...
Understanding the formation of risk preferences is crucial for elucidating the roots of economic, social, and health inequalities. However, this area remains inadequately explored. This study employs a risk preference measure directly linked to the labor market to examine whether previous experiences with high unemployment rates influence current risk decision-making among the elderly, and whether this impact varies by genotype. The findings indicate that individuals with low genetic predispositions for risk tolerance are more significantly influenced by historical fluctuations in unemployment rates than those with high genetic predispositions for risk tolerance. Consequently, this paper identifies genetic endowment as a crucial moderating factor that shapes how past experiences impact current decision-making processes. This disparity in how past experiences shape risk preferences based on genetic predisposition may further amplify inequalities in health, wealth, income, and other outcomes associated with risk preferences.
Daylight duration and time allocation of children and adolescents.
Nguyen HT, Zubrick SR, Mitrou F
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39342763 · Publisher ↗
This study explores the allocation of time, particularly to sleep, among children and adolescents in response to daily daylight variation. Utilising a dataset of over 50,000 time-use diaries from two Australian cohorts s...
This study explores the allocation of time, particularly to sleep, among children and adolescents in response to daily daylight variation. Utilising a dataset of over 50,000 time-use diaries from two Australian cohorts spanning 16 years and employing an individual fixed effects estimator, we uncover a substantial causal impact of daily daylight duration on sleep patterns. Our findings reveal that days with longer daylight hours are associated with a decrease in total sleep duration, primarily driven by a later sleep onset time. Additionally, longer daylight hours correspond to reduced time spent on personal care and media activities, with increased dedication to school and physical activities. Furthermore, we identify socio-demographic factors moderating these effects, such as older age and weekend days exerting a stronger influence on sleep duration, while females and children of unemployed mothers exhibit a subtle impact. These insights contribute to our understanding of how environmental factors shape daily routines and offer implications for designing schedules that promote positive developmental outcomes in young individuals.
The geography of healthcare: Mapping patient flow and medical resource allocation in China.
Dong X, Wang Y
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39326297 · Publisher ↗
The misallocation of medical resources leads to interregional patient flow in search of better healthcare. Using out-of-pocket medical expenditure data and a delineating method, this paper identifies spatial clusters of...
The misallocation of medical resources leads to interregional patient flow in search of better healthcare. Using out-of-pocket medical expenditure data and a delineating method, this paper identifies spatial clusters of medical services in China based on patient flow across cities. Our findings indicate that healthcare resources are more concentrated in northern China, while southern China is divided into several large healthcare clusters at the same threshold. The provincial capital and economically significant cities are more likely to serve as medical cluster centers. We further apply the gravity model to examine the effects of healthcare disparity on cross-city medical expenditure. The results reveal that geographic disparities in high-quality medical resources encourage remote healthcare-seeking behavior, and the shorter the distance between locations, the higher the level of medical consumption. Patients are inclined to seek medical services within their own province and within specific medical clusters identified through delineation methods. This effect is more pronounced among patients from non-central cities. This study highlights healthcare inequality by examining cross-regional medical expenditure, providing valuable insights for future healthcare policy.
The effects of physical activity prescription on mental health: Evidence from primary care.
Hernández-Pizarro HM, Maynou L
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39305565 · Publisher ↗
While the benefits of physical activity on health are well documented, in high-income countries 1 in 3 adults do not reach the recommended levels. Thus, policy makers have developed interventions to promote physical acti...
While the benefits of physical activity on health are well documented, in high-income countries 1 in 3 adults do not reach the recommended levels. Thus, policy makers have developed interventions to promote physical activity. The aim of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of physical activity prescription on mental health outcomes, by studying an intervention that prescribes physical activity at the primary care level in Catalonia (PAFES). This intervention specifically targets the adult population with high cardiovascular risk. We use data from the Health Survey of Catalonia (2011-2016) and exploit the variation in the number of trained General Practitioners that prescribe physical activity. Our results show that physical activity prescription reduces the probability of suffering from poor mental health. This effect is mainly driven by females within the targeted population. We also explore the main effect (or the output) of the intervention. While PAFES increases the probability of patients undertaking high-level physical activity, it does not affect rates of sedentarism or minutes walked per day. Results are consistent when using alternative mental health outcome measures, including self-reported depression and anxiety. We conclude that the prescription of physical activity not only contributes to the improvement of physical health but is also a useful tool to help preserve mental wellbeing.
Decentralized wage bargaining and health.
Maczulskij T, Haapanen M, Kauhanen A … +1 more , Riukula K
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39288727 · Publisher ↗
This study examines the association between decentralized wage bargaining and worker health in Finland. We utilize unique data on collective agreements matched with total population administrative data on mental health d...
This study examines the association between decentralized wage bargaining and worker health in Finland. We utilize unique data on collective agreements matched with total population administrative data on mental health disorders and sickness absence for the 2005-2013 period. We find that decentralized wage bargaining is related to mental health among blue-collar workers. Specifically, local wage increase allowances are associated with improved mental health in firms with a high concentration of white-collar employees, whereas this association is reversed in firms where blue-collar workers predominate. No consistent links to sickness absences are observed. Further analyses indicate that higher earnings under local wage agreements may explain the observed improvement in mental health in white-collar intensive firms, whereas decreased employment could partially explain the worsened mental health in blue-collar intensive firms.
Diverging destinies: How children are faring under demographic transition.
Narjinary G, Goli S
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39226830 · Publisher ↗
India reached the replacement level of fertility in 2020. However, the journey of fertility transition is unconventional and heterogeneous within the country and across the different socio-economic groups. The fertility...
India reached the replacement level of fertility in 2020. However, the journey of fertility transition is unconventional and heterogeneous within the country and across the different socio-economic groups. The fertility transition is considered to be faster than its socio-economic and health transition in several states. Thus, it has been presumed that the returns to fertility decline are heterogeneous across the states and population sub-groups. Our specific hypothesis is that although rich and poor, and educated and un-educated, everyone had significantly contributed to the fertility decline in response to family planning policies, only those socio-economically better-off have been investing relatively more in their children compared to the poor, and this has led to diverging destinies for children. We tested this supposition using a macro-level panel dataset (1992-2021), fixed and random effects, and IV regression models. The results confirm that child health care and outcomes have diverged while fertility declined from 1992 to 2021. These results are sustained in multiple robustness checks. While fertility is declining with highly state-sponsored family planning programmes, the persistent socio-economic inequalities are leading to unequal progress in health outcomes for children in India.
Long-term exposure to ambient PM and population health: evidence from linked census data.
Rowland N, McVicar D, Vlachos S … +3 more , Jahanshahi B, McGovern ME, O'Reilly D
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39208556 · Publisher ↗
Particulate matter suspended in the air that is comprised of microscopic particles with a diameter of 2.5μm or less (PM) is among the most impactful pollutants globally. Extensive evidence shows exposure to ambient PM is...
Particulate matter suspended in the air that is comprised of microscopic particles with a diameter of 2.5μm or less (PM) is among the most impactful pollutants globally. Extensive evidence shows exposure to ambient PM is associated with a wide range of poor health outcomes. However, few studies examine long-run pollution exposures in nationally representative data. This study exploits Census data for Northern Ireland, linked to average PM concentrations at the 1x1km grid-square level during the period 2002-2010. We combine outcome measures in 2011 with data on complete residential histories. Before adjusting for other covariates, we show strong relationships between PM exposure, self-rated general health, disability, and all available (eleven) domain-specific health measures in the data. Associations with poor general health, chronic illness, breathing difficulties, mobility difficulties, and deafness are robust to extensive conditioning and to further analysis designed to examine sensitivity to unobserved confounders.
Beyond the biological prime: Deciphering the link between child survival and maternal age in India.
Majid MF, Kaur O, Deolalikar AB
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39191048 · Publisher ↗
This paper investigates the impact of maternal age at birth on child mortality in India, the world's most populous country burdened with significant neonatal and infant mortality. Utilizing data from the latest National...
This paper investigates the impact of maternal age at birth on child mortality in India, the world's most populous country burdened with significant neonatal and infant mortality. Utilizing data from the latest National Family Health Surveys, covering around 1 million children, our analysis incorporates models with household and biological-mother fixed-effects to address unobserved heterogeneity. Outcomes include neonatal mortality (<28 days), infant mortality (<12 months), and under-5 mortality. Findings reveal a U-shaped relationship between maternal age and child mortality, with the highest risk for mothers below 17 and above 40 years old. Robustness checks confirm the enduring significance of maternal age even after adjusting for socioeconomic factors and time-variant unobservables. Moreover, models with biological-mother fixed-effects suggest higher risks compared to models that only control for observables, indicating that regressions without controls for time-invariant heterogeneity may underestimate the risks of maternal age at birth.
The role of economic news in predicting suicides.
Moscone F, Tosetti E, Vittadini G
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39173330 · Publisher ↗
In this paper we explore the role of media and language used to comment on economic news in nowcasting and forecasting suicides in England and Wales. This is an interesting question, given the large delay in the release...
In this paper we explore the role of media and language used to comment on economic news in nowcasting and forecasting suicides in England and Wales. This is an interesting question, given the large delay in the release of official statistics on suicides. We use a large data set of over 200,000 news articles published in six major UK newspapers from 2001 to 2015 and carry sentiment analysis of the language used to comment on economic news. We extract daily indicators measuring a set of negative emotions that are often associated with poor mental health and use them to explain and forecast national daily suicide figures. We find that highly negative comments on the economic situation in newspaper articles are predictors of higher suicide numbers, especially when using words conveying stronger emotions of fear and despair. Our results suggest that media language carrying very strong, negative feelings is an early signal of a deterioration in a population's mental health.
Loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from five European countries.
Rebechi A, Lepinteur A, Clark AE … +3 more , Rohde N, Vögele C, D'Ambrosio C
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39167991 · Publisher ↗
We use quarterly panel data from the COME-HERE survey covering five European countries to analyse three facets of the experience of loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, in terms of prevalence, loneliness peake...
We use quarterly panel data from the COME-HERE survey covering five European countries to analyse three facets of the experience of loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, in terms of prevalence, loneliness peaked in April 2020, followed by a U-shape pattern in the rest of 2020, and then remained relatively stable throughout 2021 and 2022. We then establish the individual determinants of loneliness and compare them to those found in the literature predating the COVID-19 pandemic. As in previous work, women are lonelier, and partnership, education, income, and employment protect against loneliness. However, the pandemic substantially shifted the age profile: it is now the youngest who are the loneliest. We last show that pandemic policies affected loneliness, which rose with containment policies but fell with government economic support. Conversely, the intensity of the pandemic itself, via the number of recent COVID-19 deaths, had only a minor impact. The experience of the pandemic has thus shown that public policy can influence societal loneliness trends.
Power to choose? Examining the link between contraceptive use decision and domestic violence.
Ojha M, Babbar K
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39154411 · Publisher ↗
Contraception is a crucial tool that empowers women to control their bodily autonomy. Concurrently, domestic violence remains a pressing public health issue, depleting women's autonomy. We establish a causal link between...
Contraception is a crucial tool that empowers women to control their bodily autonomy. Concurrently, domestic violence remains a pressing public health issue, depleting women's autonomy. We establish a causal link between a woman's contraceptive use decision and the occurrence of intimate partner violence. We use an instrumental variable approach to estimate our causal effects by utilizing nationally representative data for India. Using exogenous variation in the neighbourhood average of women's exposure to family planning messages via radio, we find that if a woman independently makes the decision to use contraceptives, she is at a significantly higher risk of physical, sexual and emotional domestic violence. We estimate the bounds of our effects by assuming the IV to be plausibly exogenous, where we relax the exogeneity condition. Our findings underscore the importance of reproductive health in initiatives that reduce domestic violence and targeted policies that provide support to younger and employed women and those from backward caste and rural areas.
Road to perdition? The effect of illicit drug use on labour market outcomes of prime-age men in Mexico.
Antón JI, Ponce J, Muñoz de Bustillo R
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Dec · PMID 39142004 · Publisher ↗
This research addresses the impact of illicit drug use on labour market outcomes of men in Mexico. We leverage statistical information from three waves of a comparable national survey and make use of the Lewbel's heteros...
This research addresses the impact of illicit drug use on labour market outcomes of men in Mexico. We leverage statistical information from three waves of a comparable national survey and make use of the Lewbel's heteroskedasticity-based instrumental variable strategy to deal with the endogeneity of the drug consumption. Our results suggests that drug consumption has fairly negative effects in the Mexican context: it reduces employment, occupational attainment and formality and raises unemployment of local males. These effects seem larger than those estimated for high-income economies.
Health welfare in the digital era: Exploring the impact of digital trade on residents' health.
Wang J, Wu H, Liu Y … +1 more , Wang W
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Aug · PMID 39089003 · Publisher ↗
As a product combining information and communication technology, digital technology, and traditional trade, digital trade represents a new form of international trade development in the context of economic globalization....
As a product combining information and communication technology, digital technology, and traditional trade, digital trade represents a new form of international trade development in the context of economic globalization. As its scale continues to expand, digital trade not only profoundly impacts consumer health behaviors and environmental pollution control but also enhances opportunities for residents to access healthcare products and services. This could potentially have a significant promoting effect on residents' health levels. However, the extent and mechanisms through which digital trade affects residents' health remain unclear. Accordingly, this study fills in a gap in the research by calculating the provincial-level digital trade index for China from 2012-2020 and matching it with data from the China Family Panel Studies. The goal is to find the micro-causal mechanisms of digital trade on residents' health from green consumption and environmental improvement perspectives. The results show that digital trade reduces residents' medical expenses and improves their health. We use a quasi-natural experiment by treating the cross-border e-commerce comprehensive pilot zone as a digital trade treatment group and conducting a difference-in-differences estimation, finding that the health effects of digital trade remain significant. Heterogeneity indicates that the health effects of digital trade are powerful for middle- and high-income households and rural residents. In the east and center, in regions with well-developed transportation infrastructure and digital financial inclusion, the development of digital trade is more conducive to residents' health. Additionally, we demonstrate that digital trade can affect residents' health by promoting green consumption, eliminating energy poverty (i.e., improving indoor air pollution), and enhancing environmental quality (i.e., improving outdoor environmental pollution). This study provides solid scientific empirical evidence for enhancing human sustainable development through global digital trade.
Trust predicts compliance with COVID-19 containment policies: Evidence from ten countries using big data.
Sarracino F, Greyling T, O'Connor KJ … +2 more , Peroni C, Rossouw S
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Aug · PMID 39047673 · Publisher ↗
We use Twitter, Google mobility, and Oxford policy data to study the relationship between trust and compliance over the period March 2020 to January 2021 in ten, mostly European, countries. Trust has been shown to be an...
We use Twitter, Google mobility, and Oxford policy data to study the relationship between trust and compliance over the period March 2020 to January 2021 in ten, mostly European, countries. Trust has been shown to be an important correlate of compliance with COVID-19 containment policies. However, the previous findings depend upon two assumptions: first, that compliance is time invariant, and second, that compliance can be measured using self reports or mobility measures alone. We relax these assumptions by calculating a new time-varying measure of compliance as the association between containment policies and people's mobility behavior. Additionally, we develop measures of trust in others and national institutions by applying emotion analysis to Twitter data. Results from various panel estimation techniques demonstrate that compliance changes over time and that increasing (decreasing) trust in others predicts increasing (decreasing) compliance. This evidence indicates that compliance changes over time, and further confirms the importance of cultivating trust in others.
Health impact evaluation of Aspirational Districts Program in India: Evidence from National Family Health Survey.
Agarwal SK, Mishra S
Econ Hum Biol · 2024 Aug · PMID 39018957 · Publisher ↗
The Aspirational District Program (ADP) is a unique initiative of Government of India launched in 2018 that aims to reduce inter-district multidimensional inequality. ADP aims to bring the least developed districts to ca...
The Aspirational District Program (ADP) is a unique initiative of Government of India launched in 2018 that aims to reduce inter-district multidimensional inequality. ADP aims to bring the least developed districts to catch up with the rest of the other districts in the country. The program is comprehensive in its scope as it targets improvement of several key development indicators spanning health and nutrition, education, agriculture and water resources, financial inclusion and skill development and basic infrastructure indicators. Aspirational districts (ADs) are eligible for enhanced funding and priority allocation of various initiatives undertaken by the central and the state governments. Our research estimates the causal impact of ADP on the targeted health and nutrition indicators using a combination of propensity score matching and difference-in-differences (PSM-DID). We use the fourth and fifth rounds of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data collected in 2015-16 and 2019-21 respectively which serve as the pre and post-treatment data for our analysis. Moreover, we take advantage of the transparent mechanism outlined for the identification of ADs under ADP, which we use for propensity score matching for our PSM-DID. While we observe negative impact of ADP on early initiation of breastfeeding, we believe that the impact is confounded with the effects of Covid-19 since part of NFHS-5 data was collected during the pandemic. However, the negative impact of ADP on early initiation of breastfeeding disappears when we only use pre-covid data (i.e. data for districts from states surveyed before the pandemic). Additionally, using pre-covid data we find a reduction in the prevalence of underweight children younger than 5 years to an extent of 2 to 4 percentage points in ADs as an impact of ADP, which is robust across multiple specification. We do not find evidence of a positive or a negative impact of ADP on any other health and nutrition indicators. Future research efforts should be made towards impact evaluation of all the targeted indicators in order to get a comprehensive unbiased evaluation of ADP.
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