Online health information seeking and Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy: Evidence from 50+ Europeans.

We use recently released data from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to investigate the role of online health information seeking on Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy, which is defined as the reluctance or refusal to receive vaccinations despite the availability of vaccines. We adopt an instrumental variable strategy that exploits the computerization of workplaces occurred in the last century to deal with endogeneity. We find that searching for health information strongly reduces vaccine hesitancy. Results also show that individuals whose social networks suffered more during the outbreak, in terms of hospitalisations and deaths, are less likely to be hesitant. Improving individuals' technological skills might have positive spill-over effects for public health.

The economic impact of the first wave of the pandemic on 50+ Europeans.

We analyse the effects of the first wave of the COVID-19 crisis on the economic situation of 50+ Europeans. We construct a financial distress indicator that captures experiencing an income loss, difficulties to make ends meet and the need to postpone payments. We find that education and income before the pandemic has a protective role, and so does being past retirement age. For households under retirement age, instead, the pandemic has exacerbated inequalities. We also investigate whether households report worse difficulties in making ends meet compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. We show that their ability to make ends meet worsens more with income losses during the pandemic compared to losses experienced in the two-year period before the pandemic.

The Long-Term Consequences of a Golden Nest: Socioeconomic Status in Childhood and the Age at Leaving Home.

The age at leaving the parental home has significant implications for social and economic outcomes across the life course, highlighting the importance of examining nest-leaving patterns. We study the role of childhood standard of living on the age at nest leaving. Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we show empirically that individuals who grow up in families with a higher socioeconomic status-that is, in a golden nest-leave the parental home later than others. Given that better-off individuals tend to obtain more education, and that young adults generally leave the parental home after completing their education, we also find that a higher level of education delays nest leaving. Nonetheless, the positive relationship between socioeconomic status and nest-leaving age still holds for given education levels, across European countries characterized by different cultural traits, for both males and females, and among urban and rural residents. We use a three-period life cycle model to show that this behavior is consistent with standard assumptions about preferences and resources if earnings increase with age. Moreover, habit-forming preferences that assume that utility depends on the gap between current and past consumption reinforce the delaying effect of a golden nest on nest leaving.

How did European retirees respond to the COVID-19 pandemic?

We investigate the role of retirement on the adoption of preventive behaviours and on mental health during the first wave of the pandemic. We address the endogeneity of the timing of retirement using variation in early retirement and old-age pension eligibility. We find that those who retired earlier responded to the pandemic by limiting their mobility more, and by adopting stricter preventive behaviours in public. These limitations affected the mental health of singles in retirement.

Retirement and Healthy Eating.

This paper investigates the effect of retirement on healthy eating using data drawn from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). We estimate the causal effect of retiring from work on daily fruit or vegetable consumption by exploiting policy changes in eligibility rules for early and statutory retirement. Our results show that changes in eating behaviour upon retirement are gender-specific: retirement induces men to reduce healthy eating; it has no effect on women. We further show that, for men, retirement increases the probability of becoming obese.

The contributions of paradata and features of respondents, interviewers and survey agencies to panel co-operation in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe.

This paper deals with panel cooperation in a cross-national, fully harmonized face-to-face survey. Our outcome of interest is panel cooperation in the fourth wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Following a multilevel approach, we focus on the contribution of paradata at three different levels: fieldwork strategies at the survey agency level, features of the (current) interviewer and paradata describing respondent interview experience from the previous wave. Our results highlight the importance of respondent's prior interview experience, and of interviewer's quality of work and experience. We also find that survey agency practice matters: daily communication between fieldwork coordinators and interviewers is positively associated with panel cooperation.

Depressive symptoms and muscle weakness: A two-way relation?

The potential association between depressive symptoms and dynapenia - i.e. muscle weakness - is limited to few, mainly cross-sectional, studies. We use SHARE (Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe) panel data to investigate whether the onset of dynapenia at 4-year follow-up can be explained by pre-existing (either at baseline, or at 2-year follow-up) depressive symptoms, or vice versa. Depressive symptoms were identified as a score of 4 or more on the 12-item EURO-D scale. Individuals were classified as affected by dynapenia if they had handgrip strength of <20 kg for women and 30 kg for men. We estimate whether being affected by symptoms of depression at baseline or becoming symptomatic between baseline and a 2-year follow-up increases the odds-ratio (OR) for dynapenia at a 4-year follow-up among individuals with no muscle strength impairment at baseline. We also carry out the reverse analysis, and study whether dynapenia at baseline or incident dynapenia between baseline and first follow-up increase the probability that individuals develop depressive symptoms by the second follow-up. The analysis was carried out using multivariate logistic regression. After adjusting for a full set of potential confounders, being symptomatic for depression at baseline did not increase the risk of dynapenia at the 4-year follow-up. Instead, individuals developing depressive symptoms between baseline and the 2-year follow-up had a 34% increased risk of developing dynapenia at the 4-year follow-up (OR 1.34, 95% CI 1.02 1.66). No significant association was detected between dynapenia at baseline or the onset of dynapenia between baseline and the 2-year follow-up and the incidence of depressive symptoms at the 4-year follow-up. In conclusion, our results support the effect of the onset of depressive symptoms on the onset of dynapenia, even after considering the role of confounding factors.

Work, retirement, and muscle strength loss in old age.

Reduced muscle strength is an accurate predictor of functional limitations, disability, and mortality. Hence, understanding which socio-economic factors contribute to preserve muscle strength in old age is central to the design of social policies that help reducing these health risks. Using data on handgrip strength collected by the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe for the population of Europeans aged 50+ and the exogenous variation in pension eligibility age across countries over time, we estimate that the retirement transition has a short-term positive causal effect on muscle strength. However, this protective effect is not persistent, as retirement speeds up the age-related trend in muscle strength loss, especially for blue-collar workers and males. The "holy grail" of early retirement may not be such a good deal for retirees' longevity and physical functioning late in life.

Retirement and cognitive decline. A longitudinal analysis using SHARE data.

We show that a new measure of cognitive decline, that can be computed in longitudinal surveys where respondents perform the same recall memory tests over the years, is highly predictive of the onset of dementia. Using SHARE data, we investigate the way retirement affects cognitive decline over time controlling for age, education and other confounding factors. We find that retirement has a long-term detrimental effect on cognition for individuals who retire at the statutory eligibility age. It plays instead a protective role for those who retire on an early retirement scheme.

"I want to break free". The role of working conditions on retirement expectations and decisions.

We investigate the role of working conditions on the desire to retire as soon as possible and on the probability of transition from employment to either full or partial retirement, using different measures of work quality. We find that low work quality strongly correlates with the desire to retire as soon as possible of "young-old" workers. This might be explained by the deterioration of employer-employee match with age due to reduced incentives for firms to invest in training and work practises that enhance workability of their senior workers. When we move from intentions to decisions, the role of work quality is less clear-cut and it mainly plays a role in the transitions from employment to full retirement.

Voluntary private health insurance among the over 50s in Europe.

Using data from Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we investigate the determinants of voluntary private health insurance (VPHI) among the over 50s in 11 European countries and their effects on healthcare spending. First, we find that the main determinants of VPHI are different in each country, reflecting differences in the underlying healthcare systems, but in most countries, education levels and cognitive abilities have a strong positive effect on holding a VPHI policy. We also analyse the effect of holding a voluntary additional health insurance policy on out-of-pocket (OOP) healthcare spending. We adopt a simultaneous equations approach to control for self-selection into VPHI policy holding and find that, only in the Netherlands, VPHI policyholders have lower OOP spending than the rest of the population, whereas in some countries (Italy, Spain, Denmark and Austria), they spend significantly more. This could be due to not only increased utilisation but also cost-sharing measures adopted by the insurers to counter the effects of moral hazard and to keep adverse selection under control.

Home-ownership in Europe: How did it happen?

We use data from the third wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARELIFE)(1) to document the different ways individuals first became home-owners across countries and over cohorts over the second half of the 20th century. Focusing on first-time home owners we find that younger cohorts became home-owners earlier and were more likely to do it through credit, less likely to inherit their home directly. Having higher human capital, being employed, married, having children and living in an urban area, all make it more likely to purchase a home with a mortgage. The persistence of family help in accessing home-ownership in many countries demonstrates the interrelation between family, market and the state in most of continental Europe.

Life insurance investment and stock market participation in Europe.

In most European countries life insurance has played a key role in household portfolios, to the extent that it has often been the first asset ever purchased. In this paper we use life history data from a host of European countries to investigate the role of life insurance investment in shaping individuals' attitudes towards participation in stocks and mutual funds. We show that individuals who purchased a life insurance policy are more likely to invest in stocks and mutual funds later. On the one hand, these findings support the notion that life insurance policies play an educational role in financial investment. On the other hand, they are also consistent with behavioural models where economic agents are first concerned with avoiding unacceptable adverse scenarios by purchasing low risk investments, such as life insurance policies, and then invest in riskier assets, such as stocks and mutual funds, to obtain higher economic returns.

Health care quality, economic inequality, and precautionary saving.

We argue that health care quality has an important impact on economic inequality and on saving behavior. We exploit district-wide variability in health care quality provided by the Italian universal public health system to identify the effect of quality on income inequality, health inequality and precautionary saving. We find that in lower quality districts there is greater income and health dispersion and higher precautionary saving. The analysis carries important insights for the ongoing debate about the validity of the life-cycle model and interesting policy implications for the design of health care systems.