VAM-Velferd, arbeidsliv og migrasjon

Health and the labor market Recent work has highlighted the role of early childhood as a fundamental determinant of later health outcomes, and there is a large literature supporting this idea. However, much less is known about the role of later experiences, both within the family and in the labor market, on health outcomes of adults. To the extent that later experiences exacerbate early health inequalities, it is important to understand what the direction and magnitudes of these effects are. Two of the main results in the Project are described below. Missing Work is a Pain: The Effect of Cox-2 Inhibitors on Sickness Absence and Disability Pension Receipt Butikofer and Skira Journal of Human Resources, Volume 53, Number 1, Winter 2018, 71-122. How does medical innovation affect labor supply? In this paper analyze how the availability of pharmaceuticals (Cox-2) used for treating pain and inflammation, affected the sickness absence and disability pension receipt of individuals with joint pain. We exploit the market entry of the Cox-2 inhibitor Vioxx and its sudden market withdrawal as exogenous sources of variation in drug use. Using Norwegian administrative data, we find Vioxxs entry decreased quarterly sickness absence days among individuals with joint pain by 7-12 percent. The withdrawal increased sickness days by 12-16 percent and increased the quarterly probability of receiving disability benefits by 6-15 percent Losing Heart? The effect of job displacement on health Black, Devereux and Salvanes: Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 2017, 68(4), 833-861 The growth and decline of firms is a prevalent feature of market economies and it is important to understand the consequents for workers who are displaced. While a lot is known about earnings losses, less is understood about consequences for health. Norway provides an interesting laboratory in which to consider the effects of displacement on health because, due to the strong social safety net, the income losses from job displacement are much lower than in most other countries and so we can largely isolate the effects of stress and lower labor market participation. Job displacement increases stress, which is known to have negative effects on cardiovascular health, for instance through individual life-style changes (increased consumption of nicotine, alcohol and dietary changes), or changes in biological parameters (increase in cholesterol concentration and cortisol). Additionally, the lower employment rates post-displacement could have direct effects on health through affecting daily activities such as exercise or opportunities to smoke. Consistent with our expectations of increased stress, we find that displaced workers are more likely to smoke than workers who maintain their employment. As a result, job displacement has a significant effect on markers for cardiovascular health. However, there is little evidence of effects of displacement on other measures of short-run health. Therefore, the results suggest that when the financial costs of displacement are very low, the health effects may also be muted. However, our smoking findings indicate that the psychic costs may still matter and may lead to unhealthy behaviors that are predicted to have adverse consequences on cardiovascular health in the long run.

Recent work has highlighted the role of early childhood as a fundamental determinant of later health outcomes, and there is a large literature supporting this idea. However, much less is known about the role of later experiences, both within the family and in the labor market, on health outcomes of adults. To the extent that later experiences exacerbate early health inequalities, it is important to understand what the direction and magnitudes of these effects are. Our research proposes to fill this void using a new dataset on the health of individuals in their 40s in Norway as well as the cause of death registry from 1960 until today. By matching these datasets to administrative records on firms, earnings, education, and family, we are able to begin to parse out the mechanisms through which labor markets and family structure affect health and health behaviors. The large changes seen in the Norwegian labor market over the last decades provide a good setting for studying the relationship between the labor market and health outcomes. There has been a significant restructuring of industries and changes in demand for certain types of workers; as one example since its peak in 1972, the employment share in the manufacturing sector has declined drastically, to around ten percent today. This has been coupled with increasing technological change that has affected firms' demand for skilled workers and led to a reallocation of workers to the service sector. Adding to these forces is the increasing globalization of industries, particularly during the last few decades with the large increase in imports from low-cost countries (in particular, there has been a dramatic increase). Another significant change in recent decades has been the huge increase in the labor force participation of women, from only 40 percent of married women working in 1970 to over 70 percent of women with children working today.