Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-s22k5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-09T04:26:18.800Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Health and Labor Force Participation of Older Men, 1900–1991

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Dora L. Costa
Dora L. Costa
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139 and a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I use Body Mass Index (BMI) to investigate how the ralationship between health status and retirement among older men has changed since 1900. Although BMIs for the elderly were much less healthy in 1900 than today, the BMI level that maximizes labor force participation rates has not changed. However, in 1900 the elasticity of nonparticipation with respect to BMI was greater than it is today, suggesting that health is now less important to the retirement decision than in the past. Other factors (especially rising income) are more important than health in explaining the historical changes in retirement rates.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 62 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Andres, R. “Mortality and Obesity: The Rationale for Age-specific Height-weight Tables.” In Principles of Geriatric Medicine, edited by Andres, R., Bierman, E. L., and Hazzard, W. R., 311–18. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985.Google Scholar
Barker, D. J. P., ed. Fetal and Infant Origins of Adult Disease. London: British Medical Journal, 1992.Google Scholar
Bartel, Ann, and Taubman, Paul. “Health and Labor Market Success: The Role of Various Diseases.” The Review of Economics and Statistics 61, no. 1 (1979): 1–8.Google Scholar
Behrman, Jere R., and Deolalikar, Anil B. “Agricultural Wages in India: The Role of Health, Nutrition and Seasonality.” In Seasonal Variability in Third World Agriculture, edited by Sahn, D. E., 107–17. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Burkhauser, Richard V., Butler, J. S.Jean, M. Mitchell, et al. “Effects of Arthritis on Wage Earning.” Journal of Gerontology 41, no. 2 (1986): 277–81.Google Scholar
Costa, Dora L. “Height, Weight, Wartime Stress, and Older Age Mortality: Evidence from the Union Army Records.” Explorations in Economic History 30, no. 4 (1993): 424–49.Google Scholar
Costa, Dora L. “Agricultural Decline and the Secular Rise in Male Retirement Rates.” Explorations in Economic History 32, no. 4 (1995): 540.–52.Google Scholar
Costa, Dora L. “Pensions and Retirement: Evidence from Union Army Records.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 110, no. 2 (1995): 297–320.Google Scholar
Deolalikar, Anil B. “Nutrition and Labor Productivity in Agriculture: Estimates for Rural South India.” Review of Economics and Statistics 70, no. 3 (1988): 406–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fogel, Robert W., Costa, Dora L., and Kim, John M.. Secular Trends in the Distribution of Chronic Conditions and Disabilities at Young Adult and Late Ages, 1860–1988: Some Preliminary Findings. Unpublished Manuscript, University of Chicago, 1993.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert W., Haines, Michael, Pope, Clayne L., et al. Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death. Grant Proposal Submitted to National Institutes of Health, 1991.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glasson, William H., Federal Military Pensions in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1918.Google Scholar
Goldin, Claudia. Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Gruenberg, E. M. “The Failures of Success.” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 55, no. 1 (1977): 3–24.Google Scholar
Haines, Michael R., and Goodman, Allen C.. “Housing Demand in the Late Nineteenth Century: Evidence from the Commissioner of Labor Survey, 1889/1890.” Journal of Urban Economics 31, no. 1 (1992): 99–122.Google Scholar
Heckman, James C. “The Common Structure of Statistical Models of Truncation, Sample Selection, and Limited Dependent Variables and a Simple Estimator for Such Models.” Annals of Economic and Social Measurement 5, no. 4 (1976): 475–92.Google Scholar
Hoffmans, M. D. A. F., Kromhout, D., and de Lezenne Coulander, C.. “Body Mass Index at the Age of 18 and its Effects on 32-Year-Mortality from Coronary Heart Disease and Cancer.” Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 42, no. 6 (1989): 513–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Keyssar, Alexander. Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Killingsworth, Mark R.Labor Supply. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.Google Scholar
Lee, I-Min, Manson, JoAnn E., Hennekens, Charles H. et al. “Body Weight and Mortality: A 27 Year Follow-up of Middle-aged Men.” Journal of the American Medical Association 270, no. 6 (1993): 2823–28.Google Scholar
Lee, Lung-Fei. “Identification and Estimation in Binary Choice Models with Limited (Censored) Dependent Variables.” Econometrica 47, no. 4 (1979): 977–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Makela, M., Heliovaara, M., Sievers, K. et al. “Prevalence, Determinants, and Consequences of Chronic Neck Pain in Finland.” American Journal of Epidemiology 134, no. 11 (1991): 1356–67.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Manton, K. G., Stallard, E., and Corder, L.. “Changes in Morbidity and Chronic Disability in the U.S. Elderly Population: Evidence from the 1982, 1984, and 1989 National Longitudinal Long Term Care Surveys.” Journals of Gerontology. Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 50, no. 4 (1995): S194–S204.Google Scholar
Margo, Robert. A. “The Labor Force Participation of Older Americans in 1900: Further Results.” Explorations in Economic History 30, no. 4 (1993): 409–23.Google Scholar
Modell, John, and Harevan, Tamara K.. “Urbanization and the Malleable American Household: An Examination of Boarding and Lodging in American Families.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 1 (08 1973): 7–32.Google Scholar
Moen, Jon Roger. “Essays on the Labor Force and Labor Force Participation Rates: The United States From 1860 Through 1950.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1987.Google Scholar
Negri, E., Pagano, R., Decarli, A., and Vecchia, C. La. “Body Weight and the Prevalence of Chronic Neck Pain.” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 42, no. 1 (1988): 24–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pincus, Theodore, Mitchell, Jean M., and Burkhauser, Richard V.. “Substantial Work Disability and Earnings Losses in Individuals less than Age 65 with Osteoarthritis: Comparisons with Rheumatoid Arthritis.” Journal of Clinical Epidemiology 42, no. 5 (1989): 449–57.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Preston, Samuel H.Census of Population, 1910 [United States]: Public Use Sample. ICPSR 9166. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1989.Google Scholar
Preston, Samuel H., and Higgs, Robert. United States Census Data, 1900: Public Use Sample. ICPSR 7825. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1989.Google Scholar
Quinn, Joseph F., and Burkhauser, Richard V.. “Work and Retirment.” In Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, edited by Binstock, R. H. and George, L. K., 308–27, San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Riley, James C. “Working Health Time: A Comparsion of Preindutrial, Industrial, and Postindustrial Experience in Life and Health.” Explorations in Economic History, 28 no. 2 (1991): 169–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Román, Díaz M. “Prevalencia de obesidad y condiciones asociadas en un centro de medicina de familia.” Boletín-Asociación Médica de Puerto Rico 84, no. 11 (1992): 302–04.Google Scholar
Strauss, John, and Thomas, Duncan. “Human Resources: Empirical Modeling of House-hold and Family Decisions.” In Handbook of Development Economics, Vol. 3A, edited by R., Behrman Jere and Srinivasen, T. N., 1883–2023. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1996.Google Scholar
Tverdal, A. “Height, Weight, and Incidence of Tuberculosis.” Bulletin of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease 63, no. 2 (1988): 16–18.Google ScholarPubMed
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Washington: GPO, 1975.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Census of Population and Housing, 1980 (United States): Public Use Microdata Samples. ICPSR 8101. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 1983.Google Scholar
U.S. Bureau of the Census. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1993. Washington, DC: GPO, 1993.Google Scholar
Verbrugge, L. “Longer Life but Worsening Health?: Trends in Health and Mortality of Middle-aged and Older Persons.” Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly 62, no. 3 (1984): 475–519.Google Scholar
Waaler, H. T. “Height, Weight, and Mortality.” The Norwegian Experience. Acta Medica Scandinavica [Suppl]. 679, supplement (1984): 1–56.Google Scholar
Whaples, Robert. “The Shortening of the American Work Week: An Economic and Historical Analysis of Its Context, Causes, and Consequences.” Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1990.Google Scholar
Yelin, Edward. H.Disablity and the Displaced Worker. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Yelin, Edward H., and Katz, Patricia. “Labor Force Participation Among Persons with Musculoskeletal Conditions, 1970–1987.” Arthritis and Rhematism 34, no. 11 (1991): 1316–70.Google ScholarPubMed