LSE ALPHA/KCL Global Ageing and Health Seminar
The LSE Alpha research group has a joint seminar with the Centre for Global Ageing at King’s College London. These monthly seminars are held at 4pm with refreshments, and alternate between LSE and Kings College London.
These events are free and open to all, registration is not required, further information here.
Forthcoming events in the series:
Wednesday 1st March 2018, 4-5pm, Kings College, Strand Building, room S -3.19 map here
Rachel Loopstra (Kings College London) – Has hunger been rising in Britain? For who, and where?
Wednesday 21st March 2018, 4-5pm, LSE room 32L.G.09 (for a map see here)
Carlos Mendez de Leon (University of Michigan) – Health trajectories at the intersection of work, retirement and ageing
Wednesday 10th May 2018, 4-5pm, Kings College, Bush House, room STD-BH (S) 2.06) map here
Maria Sirioni (University College London) – The Role of Fertility and Partnership in Later Life Cognition in the U.S.
Previous Events
Aaron Reeves (LSE International Inequalities Instititute) – Wage setting institutions, inequality, and health
Income inequality is often presumed to worsen health across countries. But the level of income inequality is a product of institutions that both shape the distribution of earnings and affect others factors that may affect health. In this paper, I explore how wage settings institutions – the rules that determine employment relations between firms and individuals – affect mortality rates across countries over time. Using data on 22 high-income countries over a 40 year period I find infant mortality rates are lower and life expectancy at birth is higher in countries with collective bargaining compared to those with minimum wage-type institutions or no wage setting institutions at all. Yet, wage setting institutions do not appear to affect health through reducing the income shares of the top 1% nor by reducing the GINI coefficient, instead they appear to affect mortality by increasing the labour share (the proportion of income going to workers rather than capitalists). Income inequality then may be correlated with poorer health but it may only be indirectly related to health outcomes. Rather, wage setting institutions (which do affect income inequality) appear to influence health by improving the economic conditions of all workers generally, strengthening their capacity to bargain for better conditions from employers. Reducing income inequality will not necessarily improve health unless it is brought about by institutional changes giving greater power to workers.
Does education improve mental health? Evidence from a compulsory schooling reform in Britain
Vahé Nafilyan
Abstract: We examine the long-term effects of raising the minimum school leaving age on long-term mental health outcomes, exploiting a compulsory schooling reform in Britain in 1972, which raised the minimum school leaving age from 15 to 16. Using a regression discontinuity design, we provide robust evidence that although the reform increased educational attainment and schooling it paradoxically increased the probability of a depression diagnosis and other mental health problems in adulthood, especially among women. Our results suggest that an additional year of schooling may have unanticipated and negative consequences on mental health for some individuals. We explore potential explanations including lower returns to schooling for some groups compared to competing opportunities (e.g., vocational education, training or employment) and their impact on early career and fertility decisions, which could lead to long-lasting detrimental consequences for mental health.
Work-family histories and extended working lives across cohorts in the UK
Dr Giorgio Di Gessa
Abstract: The United Kingdom, in common with many other governments across the world, is rapidly extending the working lives of older adults, in part through the postponement of SPA. Late life labour force participation is influenced by contemporaneous factors such as health and economic status, but also by earlier work and family experiences. Understanding later-life work in the context of the life course may provide important insight into the life course policies and norms that shape earlier work-family experiences, and which may be consequential for the extended working lives agenda.
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between family and employment histories and working until or beyond state pension age (SPA) across different cohorts in the UK. To date, we know that later-born cohorts are more likely to be in paid work in their 50s and early 60s in comparison to earlier cohorts, but we know much less about how these changes are associated with life course events pertaining to family and work experiences, and with changes in health or socio-economic characteristics.
This study employs longitudinal data from three different cohorts in the United Kingdom (that is, for respondents aged 55-69 at baseline born 1919-1933 in the UK Retirement Survey; 1929-1943 in the British Household Panel Study; and 1939-1953 in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing). Using multinomial logistic regression techniques to examine the associations between work-family experiences and participation in paid work in later life, our findings broadly support an ‘attachment hypothesis’. In particular, women who had strong attachment to the labour market throughout their lives were more likely to be in paid work, either full- or part-time, later in life compared to women with weak attachment to the labour market. Analyses also suggest that these relationships have strengthened across cohorts, i.e. younger cohorts of respondents are more likely to have worked throughout their lives, and to remain in the labour market at older ages.
Productive ageing in familialistic welfare regimes: the determinants of productive participation in Italy and South Korea
Speaker: Ginevra Floridi (LSE)
Abstract: Overwhelming concerns with prolonging working lives as a response to population ageing discount the fact that older people remain economically productive beyond paid work. This is especially true in familialistic welfare regimes, where families are assumed to be the main source of support, and women’s and older people’s contributions to informal service provision are substantial.
Broadening the definition of productivity to include work, volunteering, grandchild and adult care, this study investigates the individual and family circumstances determining participation in such activities in later life in Italy and South Korea. These ageing familialistic welfare regimes have been chosen because of differences in the relative economic and social security of older people, which have led them to assume family roles as ‘breadwinners’ in Italy and as ‘dependents’ in Korea.
The data consist in four waves each of two highly comparable surveys, the Italian sample of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging (KLoSA). Longitudinal analyses using random-effects models suggest that older people’s productive contributions respond to familial need in both settings. Interesting differences between the two countries are found in the way socioeconomic status and personal circumstances shape productive roles, with Italians participating mainly out of opportunity, and Koreans participating largely out of necessity.
The study fills a gap in the longitudinal study of later-life activity determinants, and suggests interesting ways in which the relative position of older people in society may affect participation in familialistic settings.
Is Life Expectancy Really Falling for the Least Educated? Challenges in Measuring Trends in Health Disparities.
Speaker: Professor Jennifer Dowd
Abstract: Recent public health studies made headlines reporting that life expectancy had declined over time for some subgroups in the U.S, particularly for White women with less than a high school education. These findings were understandably alarming, leading some to make analogies to the losses in life expectancy in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. We propose an alternative explanation, whereby lower life expectancies and higher mortality rates emerge as an artefact of a phenomenon they call “lagged selection bias.” In this case, lagged selection bias arises from the fact that access to education expanded dramatically for Whites in the United States over the first half of the 20th century. Using historical data on education and mortality in the U.S., the paper shows how under reasonable assumptions about stable mortality differences by early life social class, life expectancy for those with less than a high school education can appear to “fall” even though in fact mortality has improved for every group. Failure to acknowledge lagged selection bias can have important policy implications, since it can misattribute explanations for these trends to contemporary changes in policy or the economy when the trends are actually due to changing social dynamics around entry into education decades prior.
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