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差。因为健康反映了一生中过程的积累，我们将研究工作期间的压力事件如何影响退休前的健康和最终的寿命。本应用程序的主要目的是发现在面板数据中，美国和欧洲之间的健康差距是否在工作期间增加，但在退休后几年没有增加，并通过劳动力市场中压力的差异以及经济和社会政策（包括健康保险）的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，这些数据提供了制度在时间和空间上的大量差异。主要结果将是四方面的。首先，这项研究将阐明在生命周期的哪个阶段出现健康差异，并绘制出此后的路径。其次，本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，澄清文献中测量的一些概念，并指导有关该主题的实证工作。第三，本研究将利用生物标志物和报告的健康措施，为经济压力事件与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，本研究将利用各国社会政策的差异，并随着时间的推移，看看这些政策如何通过生理失调对健康的影响来促进健康的国际差异。

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.