What shapes cognition, health, and mortality in older ages?

认知能力随着年龄的增长而下降。这种下降对人类互动、经济选择和生活质量都有相当大的影响。认知能力也与健康密切相关，从年龄相关性的普遍认知衰退平稳过渡到认知相关的疾病。痴呆症是认知能力下降最严重的一个例子，它对社会的许多部分都产生了强烈的、日益严重的影响，从家庭到健康和长期护理系统。如今，它也是导致死亡的首要原因之一。在健康生产的理论模型中，认知、健康和死亡率也是相关的。自格罗斯曼(1972)的开创性工作以来，经济学家认为人力资本和健康资本的形成是一个相互关联的过程，其中潜在的人力资本与认知能力存在内在联系。在这个问题上，经济学文献的许多可能贡献之一是研究制度设置和个人选择如何影响与年龄相关的认知和健康下降。在这个项目中，我们对认知、健康和死亡率的社会经济决定因素进行了实证研究，重点放在教育、退休及其相互作用上。我们还研究了遗传倾向和其他选择，如儿童时期接种疫苗，如何影响认知和死亡率。我们使用微观计量估计技术和自然实验进行识别，以研究以下问题：1.退休对认知能力和健康的影响是什么？选择提前退休的人和选择较晚退休的人受到的影响是否不同？2.教育对认知、健康和死亡率的影响是什么？这种影响有多少是通过晚年的劳动力参与发挥作用的？3.教育和遗传倾向是如何相互作用的，从而对认知和死亡率产生影响？教育能否弥补遗传天赋的差异，或者教育政策是否加强了认知能力的遗传梯度？4.遗传天赋能否通过这种不同的退休行为来解释退休行为的差异以及退休对认知的不同影响？5.童年接种疫苗是否会影响晚年的认知？我们主要使用德国的数据，特别是来自Rentenversicherung的Nako Gesundheits研究和管理数据。对于遗传数据的分析，我们使用了健康与退休研究和英国老龄化纵向研究。

Cognitive abilities decline with age. This decline has considerable implications for human interactions, economic choices, and the quality of life. Cognitive abilities are also closely related to health, with a smooth transition from age-related general cognitive decline to cognition-related illness. Dementia, as an example of a cognitive decline in its most drastic form, strongly and increasingly affects many parts of society, ranging from families to the health- and long-term-care systems. Nowadays, it also ranks among the top reasons of mortality. Cognition, health, and mortality are also related in theoretical models of health production. Ever since the seminal work of Grossman (1972), economists thought about the formation of human and health capital as an interrelated process, where the latent human capital is intrinsically related to cognitive abilities. One of the many possible contributions of the economic literature on this issue is to study how institutional settings and individual choices influence this age-related cognitive and health decline. In this project we empirically study socio-economic determinants of cognition, health and mortality with a focus on education, retirement and their interactions. We also study how genetic disposition and other choices like child childhood vaccination affect cognition and mortality. We use microeconometric estimation techniques and natural experiments for identification in order to study the following questions: 1. What is the effect of retirement on cognitive abilities and health? Are individuals who choose to retire early affected differently than those who retire later in life? 2. What is the effect of education on cognition and health as well as mortality? How much of this effect operates through labor-force participation later in life? 3. How do education and genetic disposition interact in generating effects on cognition as well as mortality? Can education compensate for differences in genetic endowment or do education policies reinforce genetic gradients in cognitive abilities? 4. Can genetic endowment explain differences in retirement behavior and different effects of retirement on cognition by this different retirement behavior? 5. Do childhood vaccinations affect cognition later in life? We mainly use German data, in particular the NAKO Gesundheitsstudie und administrative data from the Rentenversicherung. For analyses with genetic data, we use the Health and Retirement Study and the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.