Loneliness and health among the elderly. The role of cultural heritage and relationship quality

We estimate the direct causal effect of loneliness on a variety of health outcomes using a sample of second-generation immigrants drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. In an effort to account for the endogeneity of self-declared loneliness, we explore the link between loneliness and a specific cultural trait strongly associated with quality of relations and use maternal cultural background as an instrument for loneliness. We thus also assess the importance of cultural heritage in shaping individuals' perceptions of loneliness. Additionally, we investigate one pathway by which some specific ancestral factors may influence the formation of cultural traits in the modern era. Our results suggest that loneliness has a significant impact on health, both mental and physical. Notably, our identification strategy allows us to uncover a more severe effect of loneliness on health than that found in an OLS setting. These findings are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks

Social interactions, loneliness and collective health: A new angle on an old debate

Loneliness is increasingly being recognized as an important economic and public health issue. This paper investigates the relationship between historically rooted norms that drive individuals to conform to predefined behavioral standards and contemporary perceptions of social interactions and attitudes towards loneliness. Using a sub-population of second-generation immigrants, we identify an intergenerationally transmitted component of culture that reflects the importance of restrained discipline and rules characterizing highly intensive pre-industrial agricultural systems. We show that this cultural dimension influences perceptions of the quality of social relationships and significantly affects the likelihood of experiencing loneliness. The identified trait is then used to instrument loneliness in a two-stage model for health. We find that loneliness directly affects body mass index and some specific mental health issues. We argue, however, that loneliness may influence other health outcomes indirectly due to its economically significant effect on the increased body mass index. The results are robust to a battery of sensitivity checks. Our findings add to a growing body of research on the importance of attitudes in predicting significant economic and health outcomes, opening up a new channel via which deeply-rooted geographical, cultural, and individual characteristics may influence comparative economic development processes

Ethnic Distribution, Effective Power and Conflict

This paper highlights the fact that different distributional aspects of ethnicity matter for conflict. We axiomatically derive a parametric class of indices of conflict potential obtained as the sum of each group relative power weighted by the probability of across group interactions. The power component of an extreme element of this class of indices is given by the Penrose-Banzhaf measure of relative power. This index combines in a non-linear way fractionalization, polarization and dominance. The empirical analysis verifies that it outperforms the existing indices of ethnic diversity in explaining ethnic conflict onset

Trends in inequality of opportunity in health over the life cycle: the role of early-life conditions

This paper explores the evolution of inequality of opportunity in the prevalence of chronic diseases along the life cycle and across different birth cohorts for individuals aged 50 or older and residing in 13 European countries. We adopt an ex-ante parametric approach and rely on the dissimilarity index as our reference inequality metric. In addition to a commonly used set of circumstances, we pay particular attention to the role of adverse early-life conditions, such as the experience of harm and the quality of the relationship with parents. In order to quantify the relative importance of each circumstance, we apply the Shapley inequality decomposition method. Our results suggest that inequality of opportunity in health is not stable over the life cycle - it is generally lower at younger ages and then monotonically increases. Moreover, it varies between different birth cohorts and is generally higher for younger individuals than for older age groups. Finally, the contribution of adverse early life conditions ranges between 25% and 45%, which is comparable to the share of socio-economic circumstances but significantly higher than the relative contribution of other demographic characteristics, especially at younger ages

Who’s afraid of immigration? The effect of economic preferences on tolerance

This paper suggests that intergenerationally transmitted ancestral characteristics have a significant impact on attitudes toward immigration. Using a sub-population of second-generation immigrants from the European Social Survey (ESS), we find that historical and linguistic factors that contributed to weaker long-term orientation and higher risk aversion are associated with a greater concern, especially among medium- and low-skilled workers, about the economic consequences of immigration and the admission of poorer immigrants. The results are robust to alternative sample definitions, estimation methodology, a rich set of geographical controls, and several potential confounding factors at the country of origin level

Academic Achievements: Grades versus Duration

This paper investigates the determinants of academic achievements of post-reform undergraduate students of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Academic achievements are measured with the students’ grade point averages and time to graduation. The set of independent variables contains information on students’ personal characteristics, prior academic achievements, family background, academic track at university, and several “peer-group” effects. The novelty of this paper is threefold: i) we use a rich data set obtained by matching the University’s administrative data records with the data drawn from the AlmaLaurea questionnaires, ii) we pay particular attention to the effects of academic track regularity on students’ performance, and iii) we propose a theoretical model of a trade-off between grades and time to graduation, and test empirically its validity by taking into account the problem of reciprocal causation between grades and time to graduation. The model suggests that grades and time to graduation are inversely related. While there is an unambiguous effect of students’ ability and financial condition on grades, these effects are less straightforward in the case of time to graduation. The sign and the magnitude of the effects of ability and financial condition on time to graduation depends on students’ academic track regularity. Moreover, the relative importance of grades and time to graduation depends, in addition to ability and financial situation, also on the external economic conditions in the labor market. Our empirical exercise confirms the predictions of the model

Online health information seeking behavior, healthcare access, and health status during exceptional times

Online health information seeking behavior (e-HISB) is becoming increasingly common and the trend has accelerated as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic when individuals strongly relied upon the Internet to stay informed by becoming exposed to a wider array of health information. Despite e-HISB having become a global trend, very few empirical investigations have analyzed its potential influence on healthcare access and individuals’ health status. In this paper, we try to fill this gap. We use data from the second SHARE Corona Survey, supplemented with data from the previous 8th wave of SHARE, and estimate a recursive model of e-HISB, healthcare access, and individuals’ health status that accounts for individuals’ unobserved heterogeneity. Our findings suggest that e-HISB can empower individuals to better understand health concerns, facilitating improved health condition management. However, e-HISB can also trigger a chain reaction, as navigating vast amonts of online health information can heighten fear and anxiety. This increased anxiety may lead to higher utilization of medical services, adversely affecting individuals' perceptions of their health

Adverse childhood experiences and risk behaviours later in life: Evidence from SHARE countries.

In this paper we investigate whether exposure to adverse experiences during childhood such as physical and emotional abuse affects the likelihood of unhealthy habits and separately the insurgency of chronic diseases and disabilities later in life. The novelty of our approach consists in exploiting the recently published data on adverse childhood experiences for 19 SHARE countries, which enables us to account for country-specific heterogeneity and investigate the long-run effects of exposure to adverse early-life circumstances on risk behaviour such as smoking, drinking, overweight and obesity. Our results highlight a significant positive effect of exposure to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on the probability of unhealthy lifestyles as well as on the insurgency of chronic diseases and disabilities in the long run