Association of Hypertension with Well-Being: Results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) Study.

INTRODUCTION: It remains unclear how hypertension affects subjective well-being, especially in light of its potential gender-specific impacts. AIM: In this study, we aimed to study the association between hypertension and subjective well-being and the potential gender differences in this relationship as well as mediating factors. METHODS: We use individual-level data from > 1 million Americans who participated in six waves of the nationally representative Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey. We employ descriptive and regression analyses to determine the association between hypertension and subjective well-being while controlling for the usual well-being covariates identified from the related literature. RESULTS: Hypertension was negative associated with subjective well-being (p < 0.001) and our results for covariates were in line with the findings in the related literature. The association between hypertension and subjective well-being was only found in males (p < 0.001) but not in females. The relationship is mediated by age and exercising but only for females. CONCLUSION: Hypertension is negatively associated with well-being among males. The diagnosis of hypertension should not only lead to medical treatments but also involve a careful psychological management.

Well-Being Inequality Among Adolescents and Young Adults.

PURPOSE: This study aimed to examine patterns of well-being across developmental stages and patterns of inequality in well-being among young adults and adolescents. Well-being exists when adolescents and young adults thrive and can achieve their full potential. METHODS: We used individual-level survey data from the Gallup World Poll from 164 countries between 2009 and 2017 (N = 446,934). Regression analyses were used to determine associations. RESULTS: We documented substantial inequality in well-being across three developmental stages (adolescence, early adulthood, young adulthood). Health, education, income, and social relations are strongly associated with mean well-being and well-being inequality. We showed, for mean well-being, the relative importance of these factors varies over life-cycle stages. For inequality, most factors were consistent across developmental groups; however, we identified certain characteristics that were only relevant at certain developmental stages. DISCUSSION: Given the policy importance of well-being at all stages of life and the significance of adolescence and early adulthood in developing positive health-related behaviors, policies and programs targeting the highlighted characteristics are likely to be effective but require a multisectoral approach.

Global evidence of inequality in well-being among older adults.

BACKGROUND: By 2030, the UN expects 1.4 billion older adults and 2.1 billion by 2050. By 2050, 80 percent of older persons will live in developing nations. This demographic shift will present new challenges and opportunities in several areas, including health, migration, employment, and social safety nets. This study's aims were to: (1) present novel evidence on the trends and determinants of well-being and well-being inequality among older people around the world; and (2) highlight variation across World Bank development groups. METHODS: The study utilizes individual-level survey data from nine waves of the Gallup World Poll (2009-2017), which is representative of about 99.5% of the global population. First, we report country-level panel evidence on well-being and well-being inequality for adults over 60 years of age. Second, we estimate regressions to identify the individual-level determinants of well-being and well-being inequality. RESULTS: Our results indicate that average levels of happiness vary little over time. This holds for all World Bank development groups. In contrast, we show that inequality in well-being increases for all categories except in high-income countries. Examining the factors that influence well-being and well-being inequality reveals the particular importance of income, social ties, and health. We also reveal gender differences in global well-being; women tend to be happier than men. Lastly, whereas variations in inequity-causing factors are minimal when comparing older to younger individuals, they vary substantially when comparing across development groups. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that rather than focusing on the average level of well-being among older people, governments should consider the full distribution of well-being. This requires a special emphasis on health, social networks, and education, as well as the assessment of distributional impacts in policy proposals.

Air pollution and motor vehicle collisions in New York city.

Road traffic accidents are a pervasive feature of everyday life, killing 36,500 people, injuring 4.5 million and, overall, generating costs to the American society of $340 billion in 2019. Understanding the underlying factors can improve the design of prevention strategies. We use all road traffic collisions in New York City between 2013 and 2021 (N = 1,269,600) and match each individual collision to the nearest weather and air pollution station. Our study uses highly disaggregated data using an hourly frequency of collisions at a fine spatial level incorporating various air pollutants and weather factors. We employ an instrumental variable approach using temperature inversions to provide exogenous variation in air pollution addressing endogeneity and measurement error concerns. We find that higher concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) increase the number of collisions but leave the severity (persons injured or killed) unaffected. Part of this can be explained by the effect of air pollutants on aggressive behavior: CO (p < .05) and SO2 (p < .01) increase the number of collisions caused by aggressive driving. Interestingly, this channel is only present in male drivers. Our results provide additional evidence that air pollution not only adversely affects health, but also has "non-health" related effects which are costly for the society.

Food insecurity predicts well-being inequality.

The concept of well-being offers researchers an alternative to understanding inequality and poverty primarily through income and consumption, and recent research has emphasized the importance of examining well-being inequality. Food insecurity has been identified as an important driver of average levels of well-being; in this paper, we show it also predicts changes in the distribution of well-being. We use individual-level data from the Gallup World Poll for 135 countries between 2014 and 2017 (N = 446,741) and apply a flexible moments-based approach. We use the estimated conditional variance as a measure of inter-personal inequality in subjective well-being at the individual-level. Findings indicate that higher food insecurity is associated with higher inequality in well-being in middle- and high-income countries, but not in low-income countries. We also find that being severely food insecure correlates with peoples' well-being inequality in every income group. Understanding disparities in peoples' lives offers important, policy-relevant information that cannot be inferred from mean values alone and offers important insights to achieve SDG Goals 2 and 3 for all people.

Visual imagery skills and risk attitude.

Several of Kahneman and Tversky's seminal works in the 1970s found evidence of the importance of framing in decision making under risk. They hypothesized that imaginability (visual imagery ability) may play an important role in the evaluation of subjective probabilities. However, the impact of visual imagery ability on choice under risk has not yet been explored. This is the main purpose of our study. In an online experiment, we collected participants' visual imagery ability using the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire and their risk attitude using two choice-based risk elicitation tasks. Participants made their risk decisions either in an environment where risk was visualized (visual frame) or not (non-visual frame), and were randomly assigned to one of the two decision frames. Our results suggest that neither visual imagery ability nor decision frame has a substantial impact on risk attitude.

Violent crimes and homicide in New York City: The role of weather and pollution.

This paper studies the effect of weather and air pollution on violent crimes and homicide. We use all crimes committed in New York City between 2006 and 2020 and match each individual crime to the measures of the nearest weather, pollution station respectively. Our results show that neither weather nor pollutants have a contemporaneous effect of on homicide. In contrast, higher concentrations of carbon monoxide increase violent crimes in a U-shaped relation, that more rainfall linearly reduces violent crimes, and that sulphur dioxide has an inverted-U shaped relationship with violent crimes. Our results have implications for policing and environmental regulation.

Child health, human capital, and adult financial behavior.

This paper provides novel evidence that child health affects adult financial behavior, that is, risky asset market participation. We do so by using a longitudinal dataset with a rich set of covariates and exploit sibling fixed-effects (FE) to control for invariant unobserved heterogeneity. We begin by proposing a new mechanism working via skill formation and portfolio choice. To be precise, we test two hypotheses. First, we expect a negative correlation between poor child health and risky asset market participation. Second, this correlation should be mostly explained by differences in skills. To test these hypotheses, we use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 (NLSY79). Our results show that poor child health is associated with an 11 pp decrease in adult risky market participation conditional on demographics and family background. Moreover, our results suggest that disruption in pre-labor market skill formation is a main mediator of this relationship. These results are robust to a wide range of robustness checks. Our findings have implications for the design of health policies and policies intended to increase financial literacy and asset market participation.

COVID-19, Food Insecurity, and Migration.

In this policy piece, we investigate the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-food-insecurity migration channel and develop a policy agenda. The interaction between COVID-19 and the drop in economic activity will lead to increased food insecurity within and across countries. Higher food insecurity may act as a multiplier for the epidemic due to its negative health effects and increased migration. Research has shown that food insecurity affects within-country and cross-border migration. Besides the mean prevalence rate, the distribution of food insecurity affects the migration decision. The impacts of COVID-19 are particularly strong for people in the lower tail of the food-insecurity distribution. In the current context, the effect of food insecurity therefore could be increased migration, including both rural-urban migration and international migration. Importantly, the crisis might lead to a structural break in migration patterns. People might avoid heavily affected COVID-19 destination countries (e.g., United States, Italy, or Spain) and move to other countries. Due to the persistent nature of migration flows, this could have long-lasting effects.