Direct and crowding-out effects of a Hepatitis B vaccination campaign.

We evaluate the direct and spillover causal effects of a Hepatitis B (HB) vaccination campaign in French schools on the vaccination adherence of the targeted pupils. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that this campaign created an exogenous shock on vaccination behavior, increasing the HB vaccination rate for children aged 11 and above. At the same time, we show a drop in the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination rate of the targeted pupils and an increase in the parental belief that measles is a benign disease. We interpret these results as a salience effect: the focus on HB vaccination leads to a decrease in the belief that other vaccines are as important. The effect on MMR vaccination was relatively unexpected and may imply a negative externality. Measles is an extremely contagious disease. If the vaccination rate falls, the disease will spread further, raising the question of the net effect of the HB vaccination campaign on the well-being of the population.

Gender heterogeneity in self-reported hypertension.

We investigate the gender gap in hypertension misreporting using the French Constances cohort. We show that false negative reporting of hypertension is more frequent among men than among women, even after conditioning on a series of individual characteristics. As a second step, we investigate the causes of the gender gap in hypertension misreporting. We show that women go to the doctor more often than men do and that they have better knowledge of their family medical history. Once these differences are taken into account, the gender gap in false negative reporting of hypertension is reversed. This suggests that information acquisition and healthcare utilisation are crucial ingredients in fighting undiagnosed male hypertension.

Impact of later retirement on mortality: Evidence from France.

This paper investigates the impact of delaying retirement on mortality among the French population. We take advantage of the 1993 pension reform in the private sector to identify the causal effect of an increase in claiming age on mortality. We use administrative data which provide detailed information on career characteristics, dates of birth and death. Our results, precisely estimated, show that an exogenous increase of one year in the claiming age has no significant impact on the probability to die, measured between age 61 and 79, even when we allow for nonlinear effects of treatment intensity. To test the power of our sample to detect statistically significant effects for rare events like death, we compute minimum detectable effects (MDEs). Our MDE estimates suggest that, if an impact of later retirement on mortality would be detectable, it would remain very small in magnitude.

[Impact of retirement on health: A meta-analysis]. / L'effet de la retraite sur la santé - La vieillesse et la mort, problématiques comportementales et sociétales.

TITLE: L'effet de la retraite sur la santé - La vieillesse et la mort, problématiques comportementales et sociétales. ABSTRACT: Un système de retraite financé par répartition requiert l'équilibre entre la population qui contribue aux prestations et celle qui en bénéficie. Or, dans la plupart des pays occidentaux, le nombre de personnes âgées (bénéficiaires) augmente plus vite que le nombre d'actifs (contributeurs). Cette constatation a incité les différents gouvernements à mettre en place des réformes visant à augmenter l'âge de départ à la retraite afin d'inverser cette tendance. L'étude des effets de ces réformes sur la santé présente un double intérêt du point de vue de la politique publique. En effet, la pénibilité ou les risques pris dans certaines professions peuvent être à l'origine de coûts en termes de santé, qui peuvent être accentués par un allongement de la durée de carrière. Il semble donc essentiel de mesurer les répercussions sociales de telles réformes et d'avoir une idée précise de leurs effets sur les inégalités de santé. Ces réformes allongeant la durée de vie travaillée pourraient également avoir un impact sur les dépenses de santé, avec le basculement des coûts de la branche retraite vers la branche maladie du système de sécurité sociale, ce qui en conséquence atténuerait les bénéfices attendus de ces réformes. Les études épidémiologiques révèlent l'existence d'une corrélation négative entre retraite et santé (être à la retraite est associé à une moins bonne santé). Pour autant, il est difficile d'en déduire que partir à la retraite détériore l'état de santé. En effet, certains individus restent plus longtemps en emploi, justement parce que leur état de santé le leur permet. Dans cette revue, nous présentons une analyse comparée des résultats obtenus dans la littérature, en nous focalisant sur l'effet causal de la retraite sur la santé, et non l'inverse1 (→). Nous distinguons ainsi trois éléments : le départ à la retraite, c'est-à-dire la transition entre l'emploi et la retraite ; l'allongement de l'âge de départ à la retraite ; et la réduction de l'âge de départ à la retraite2. Nous examinerons ainsi les mécanismes pouvant expliquer le lien entre retraite et santé et détaillerons les outils permettant d'en identifier l'effet causal. Nous présenterons ensuite les résultats empiriques (ou observationnels) issus d'études examinant ce lien de causalité. (→) Voir le Forum de T. Barnay, m/s n° 10, octobre 2016, page 889.

Gender career divide and women's disadvantage in depressive symptoms and physical limitations in France.

This study investigated the relationship between women's disadvantage in mental health and physical functioning and gender differences in career backgrounds. Sexual division of labor persists and key career characteristics are overrepresented in women: low-skilled first job, downward occupational trajectory, interruptions. These interrelated characteristics are usually linked to poor health. Their overrepresentation in women may be related to the female-male health gap; however, it may not if overrepresentation transposed into substantially weaker associations with poor health outcomes. To address this question, we used the French population survey "Health and Occupational Trajectories" (2006) and focused on 45-74 year-old individuals who ever worked (n=7537). Past career characteristics were qualified by retrospective information. Logistic regressions identified past characteristics related to current depressive symptoms and physical limitations. Non-linear decomposition showed whether these characteristics contributed to the gender health gap, through their different distribution and/or association with health. The overrepresentation of unskilled first jobs, current and past inactivity and unemployment in women contributed to their excess depressive symptoms. These contributions were only slightly reduced by the weaker mental health-relatedness of current inactivity in women and increased by the stronger relatedness of low-skilled and self-employed first jobs. Overrepresentation of current inactivity, past interruptions and downward trajectories also contributed positively to women's excess physical limitations. Gender-specific career backgrounds were significantly linked to women's disadvantage in mental health and physical functioning. We need to further explore whether equalization of opportunities, especially at the early stages and in terms of career continuity, could help to reduce women's mental and physical health disadvantage.

The Lasting Health Impact of Leaving School in a Bad Economy: Britons in the 1970s Recession.

This paper investigates whether leaving school in a bad economy deteriorates health in the long run. It focuses on low-educated individuals in England and Wales who entered the labour market immediately after the 1973 oil crisis. Our identification strategy relies on the comparison of individuals who left school at the compulsory age, were born in the same year and had a similar quantity of education - but whose school-leaving behaviour in different years (hence, different economic conditions) was exogenously implied by compulsory schooling laws. We provide evidence that, unlike school-leavers who did postpone their entry into the labour market during the recessions of the 1980s and 1990s, pupils' decisions to leave school at the compulsory age immediately after the 1973 oil crisis were not endogenous to the contemporaneous economic conditions at labour-market entry. We use a repeated cross section of individuals over the period 1983-2001 from the General Household Survey and adopt a lifecourse perspective, from 7 to 26 years after school-leaving. Our results show that poor economic conditions at labour-market entry are particularly damaging to women's health. For men, the health impact of poor economic conditions at labour-market entry is less obvious and not robust to all specifications. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The choice of detecting Down syndrome: does money matter?

The prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome (amniocentesis) presents parents with a complex dilemma which requires comparing the risk of giving birth to an affected child and the risk of losing an unaffected child through amniocentesis-related miscarriage. Building on the specific features of the French Health insurance system, this paper shows that variation in the monetary costs of the diagnosis procedure may have a very significant impact on how parents solve this ethical dilemma. The French institutions make it possible to compare otherwise similar women facing very different reimbursement schemes and we find that eligibility to full reimbursement has a largely positive effect on the probability of taking an amniocentesis test. By contrast, the sole fact of being labelled 'high-risk' by the Health system seems to have, as such, only a modest effect on subsequent choices. Finally, building on available information on post-amniocentesis outcomes, we report new evidence suggesting that amniocentesis increases the risk of premature birth and low weight at birth.