Working Lives, Physiological Dysregulation and International Health Differences

描述(由申请人提供)：美国人的健康状况似乎比一些欧洲国家的人更差。因为健康反映的是一生过程的积累，我们将研究工作期间的压力事件如何影响退休前的健康，并最终影响寿命。这项应用的广泛目标是在面板数据中找出美国和欧洲之间的健康差距是否在工作年中扩大，但在退休后的几年里不会，并通过劳动力市场压力的差异以及经济和社会政策(包括医疗保险)改善效果的差异来解释这些广泛的事实。我们的分析将使用15个国家的数据，这些数据提供了机构在时间和空间上的丰富变化。主要结果将是四个方面。首先，这项研究将澄清在生命周期的哪个时间点出现健康差异，并在此后绘制它们的路径。其次，这项研究将提出一个正式的经济和生物学模型，将生理功能指标与其他健康和经济结果联系起来，澄清文献中衡量的一些概念，并指导关于这一主题的实证工作。第三，这项研究将使用生物标记物和已报道的健康指标，为经济应激事件和生理失调之间的关系提供微观和跨国的经验证据。第四，由于其跨国设计，这项研究将利用不同国家和不同时间社会政策的差异，来评估这些政策如何通过生理失调对健康的影响来促进国际健康差异。 与公共健康相关：美国在退休前几年的预期寿命方面已经落后，美国和欧洲在健康方面也出现了很大的差异。这个项目旨在验证这样一种假设，即美国工作生活压力更大，导致生理失调的差异是造成这些差异的原因。该项目将使用15个国家的大量纵向数据集，将退休前几年的健康结果与生活史联系起来，并利用各国社会政策的差异。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The U.S. appears to have worse health than people in a number of European countries. Because health reflects an accumulation of processes over a lifetime, we will study how stressful events during the working years may affect pre-retirement health and ultimately longevity. The broad aims of this application are to find whether in panel data the health gap between the U.S. and Europe increases during the working years, but not during the post-retirement years, and to explain these broad facts by differences in the stress induced in the labor market and by differences in the ameliorating effects of economic and social policy (including health insurance). Our analysis will use data on 15 countries, which provides a wealth of variation in institutions in time as well as in space. The principal outcomes will be fourfold. First, this study will clarify at what point in the life-cycle health differences emerge and chart their path thereafter. Second, this study will propose a formal economic and biological model linking indicators of physiological functioning to other health and economic outcomes clarifying some of the concepts measured in the literature and guide empirical work on the topic. Third, this study will provide micro as well as cross-country empirical evidence on the relationship between economic stressful events and physiological dysregulation using biomarkers but also reported health measures. Fourth, because of its cross-country design, this study will exploit differences in social policy across countries and over time to see estimate how these policies contribute to the international differences in health through the effect of physiological dysregulation on health. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The U.S. has fallen behind in terms of life expectancy in the pre-retirement years and large differences in health have emerged between the U.S. and Europe. This project aims to test the hypothesis that differences in physiological dysregulation due to a more stressful working life in the U.S. are responsible for those differences. This project will use a large array of longitudinal datasets in 15 countries to link health outcomes in the pre-retirement years to life histories and exploit differences in social policy across countries.