Papers by Agar Brugiavini
Social Science Research Network, 2008
Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published i... more Any opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but the institute itself takes no institutional policy positions. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post World Net. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. IZA Discussion Paper No.
Review of Economics of the Household, May 19, 2022
This paper investigates whether exposure to adverse experiences during childhood, such as physica... more This paper investigates whether exposure to adverse experiences during childhood, such as physical and emotional abuse, affects the likelihood of unhealthy habits later in life. The novelty of our approach is twofold. First, we exploit the recently published data on adverse childhood experiences in 19 European countries from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE), which enables us to account for country-specific heterogeneity and investigate the long-term effects of exposure to adverse early-life circumstances (such as smoking, drinking, excess weight and obesity) on unhealthy lifestyles later in life. Second, we estimate the effect of childhood trauma on unhealthy lifestyles separately for European macro-regions using a clustering of countries emphasising cultural differences. Our results highlight the positive effect of exposure to adverse childhood experiences on the probability of unhealthy lifestyles in the long run. Harm from parents is associated with a higher probability of smoking in adulthood, while child neglect and a poor relationship with parents increase the probability of smoking later in life. • Smoking Behaviour • Heavy drinking • Obesity JEL Classification H4 • I12.
The novel coronavirus pandemic and the consequent restrictions imposed by governments worldwide h... more The novel coronavirus pandemic and the consequent restrictions imposed by governments worldwide have affected individuals' health and well-being globally. The most significant public health costs of lockdown restrictions include potential adverse effects on mental health. In the recent literature on symptoms of depression in the elderly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the neglected topics is the impact of disrupting parent-adult child contacts on their psychological and emotional well-being. Using data from the 8th wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the SHARE Corona Survey, this study aims to fill this gap, providing additional insights into the psychological status of, and strain on, older people during the COVID-19 outbreak and contributing to the body of research on the negative association between social isolation and the psychological well-being of the elderly. Our findings show that the interventions deemed essential to reduce the spread of the pandemic, such as the "stay-at-home" order, have necessarily disrupted personal parent-child contacts and the social processes that facilitate psychological wellbeing, with negative consequences on the mental health of elderly parents.
Social Science Research Network, 2015
Based on a sample of university students, we provide field and laboratory evidence that a small s... more Based on a sample of university students, we provide field and laboratory evidence that a small scale training intervention has a both statistically and economically significant effect on subjective and objective assessments of financial knowledge. We also show that for a large part of students whose self-assessed financial knowledge has improved we do not find an increase in their actual skills.
Economics and Human Biology, Aug 1, 2022
Education Economics, Oct 7, 2019
Social Science Research Network, 2023
Psychology Press eBooks, May 8, 2015
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, May 17, 2017
Public programs that benefit older individuals, such as Social Security, may be changed in the fu... more Public programs that benefit older individuals, such as Social Security, may be changed in the future in ways that reflect an expectation of longer work lives. But do older Italians have the health capacity to work longer? This paper explores this question by asking how much older individuals could work if they worked as much as those with the same mortality rate in the past or as much as their younger counterparts in similar health. Using both methods, we estimate that there is significant additional capacity to work at older ages. We also explore whether there are differences in health capacity across education groups and whether health has improved more over time for the highly educated, using education quartiles to surmount the challenge of changing levels of education over time.
Social Science Research Network, 2008
Social Science Research Network, 2021
This paper focuses on the changes in care provision at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak by explo... more This paper focuses on the changes in care provision at the time of the COVID-19 outbreak by exploiting variation in lockdown policies across Europe. We use the SHARE-COVID-19 survey, which involves about 50000 respondents of age 50 and over in 26 countries, to investigate how the stringency of the policy measures have affected care provision. Our study is based on the linkage of the SHARE-COVID-19 data with an individual specific "stringency index" which measures the intensity of the restriction policies and the degree of individual's exposure. We find that older individuals, low-income individuals and people affected by limitations in everyday life faced a higher probability of receiving help because of the lockdown policies. Women and people in the age group 50-65 were more likely to provide help/care, but we also uncover a complex interaction with the labour market condition of caregivers. Lockdown policies hit hard individuals who were already receiving care as they experienced a form of rationing, both due to higher financial costs and travelling restrictions. Since these individuals are already among the most fragile in society, our evidence raises concern and calls for a redesign of the welfare system.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Apr 25, 2022
Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, 2018
Based on a sample of university students, we provide evidence that a small-scale training interve... more Based on a sample of university students, we provide evidence that a small-scale training intervention has both a statistically and economically significant effect on subjective and objective assessments of financial knowledge. We also show that the intervention increases self-assessed more than actual financial knowledge. The intervention consists of measuring financial literacy before and after a small on-line course and is administered through an on-line platform.
The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, 2019
In this paper we discuss the value of international comparative empirical studies within the broa... more In this paper we discuss the value of international comparative empirical studies within the broad field of the economics of ageing. We argue the value is particularly great when such comparative research is based on long life-history data on participants, collected using large-scale autobiographical life-history methods. We identify particular aspects of such comparisons that create value relative to other empirical methods and also briefly survey recent key papers to illustrate each aspect. Finally we provide a short new application of this method, using data from SHARE and ELSA, to look at the question of how labour markets for older workers in Europe have been changing across cohorts and the extent to which this has been associated with changing retirement ages in public pension systems.
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Papers by Agar Brugiavini