IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/15311.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Short-Term Mortality Consequences of Income Receipt

Author

Listed:
  • William N. Evans
  • Timothy J. Moore

Abstract

Many studies find that households increase their consumption after the receipt of expected income payments, a result inconsistent with the life-cycle/permanent income hypothesis. Consumption can increase adverse health events, such as traffic accidents, heart attacks and strokes. In this paper, we examine the short-term mortality consequences of income receipt. We find that mortality increases following the arrival of monthly Social Security payments, regular wage payments for military personnel, the 2001 tax rebates, and Alaska Permanent Fund dividend payments. The increase in short-run mortality is large, potentially eliminating some of the protective benefits of additional income.

Suggested Citation

  • William N. Evans & Timothy J. Moore, 2009. "The Short-Term Mortality Consequences of Income Receipt," NBER Working Papers 15311, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15311
    Note: EH
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w15311.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin Browning & M. Dolores Collado, 2001. "The Response of Expenditures to Anticipated Income Changes: Panel Data Estimates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 681-692, June.
    2. Angus Deaton, 2003. "Health, Inequality, and Economic Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 113-158, March.
    3. Anne Case, 2004. "Does Money Protect Health Status? Evidence from South African Pensions," NBER Chapters, in: Perspectives on the Economics of Aging, pages 287-312, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Grimard, Franque & Parent, Daniel, 2007. "Education and smoking: Were Vietnam war draft avoiders also more likely to avoid smoking?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 896-926, September.
    5. Melvin Stephens Jr., 2003. ""3rd of tha Month": Do Social Security Recipients Smooth Consumption Between Checks?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 406-422, March.
    6. Dobkin, Carlos & Puller, Steven L., 2007. "The effects of government transfers on monthly cycles in drug abuse, hospitalization and mortality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(11-12), pages 2137-2157, December.
    7. Sumit Agarwal & Chunlin Liu & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2007. "The Reaction of Consumer Spending and Debt to Tax Rebates-Evidence from Consumer Credit Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(6), pages 986-1019, December.
    8. Single, E. & Robson, L. & Rehm, J. & Xi, X., 1999. "Morbidity and mortality attributable to alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug use in Canada," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 89(3), pages 385-390.
    9. Shapiro, Matthew D & Slemrod, Joel, 1995. "Consumer Response to the Timing of Income: Evidence from a Change in Tax Withholding," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 274-283, March.
    10. Adriana Lleras-Muney, 2005. "The Relationship Between Education and Adult Mortality in the United States," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(1), pages 189-221.
    11. Christopher J. Ruhm, 2000. "Are Recessions Good for Your Health?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(2), pages 617-650.
    12. Nicholas S. Souleles & Jonathan A. Parker & David S. Johnson, 2006. "Household Expenditure and the Income Tax Rebates of 2001," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1589-1610, December.
    13. Melvin Stephens Jr., 2002. "Paycheck Receipt and the Timing of Consumption," NBER Working Papers 9356, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. James P. Smith, 1999. "Healthy Bodies and Thick Wallets: The Dual Relation between Health and Economic Status," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 145-166, Spring.
    15. Giovanni Mastrobuoni & Matthew Weinberg, 2009. "Heterogeneity in Intra-monthly Consumption Patterns, Self-Control, and Savings at Retirement," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 163-189, August.
    16. Hausman, Jerry & Hall, Bronwyn H & Griliches, Zvi, 1984. "Econometric Models for Count Data with an Application to the Patents-R&D Relationship," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 909-938, July.
    17. Chris Riddell & Rosemarie Riddell, 2006. "Welfare Checks, Drug Consumption, and Health: Evidence from Vancouver Injection Drug Users," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 41(1).
    18. Bruce D. Meyer & James X. Sullivan, 2009. "Five Decades of Consumption and Income Poverty," Working Papers 0907, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
    19. Shapiro, Jesse M., 2005. "Is there a daily discount rate? Evidence from the food stamp nutrition cycle," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2-3), pages 303-325, February.
    20. Matthew D. Shapiro & Joel Slemrod, 2003. "Consumer Response to Tax Rebates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 381-396, March.
    21. Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2003. "Cluster-Sample Methods in Applied Econometrics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(2), pages 133-138, May.
    22. Frijters, Paul & Haisken-DeNew, John P. & Shields, Michael A., 2005. "The causal effect of income on health: Evidence from German reunification," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(5), pages 997-1017, September.
    23. Nicholas S. Souleles, 1999. "The Response of Household Consumption to Income Tax Refunds," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 947-958, September.
    24. Verheul, G. & Singer, S.M. & Christenson, J.M., 1997. "Mortality and Morbidity Associated with the Distribution of Monthly Welfare Payments," Centre for Health Services and Policy Research 97:4d, University of British Columbia - Centre for Health Services and Policy Research..
    25. Shea, John, 1995. "Union Contracts and the Life-Cycle/Permanent-Income Hypothesis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(1), pages 186-200, March.
    26. Robert Haveman & Barbara Wolfe & Lawrence Buron & Steven C. Hill, 1995. "The Loss Of Earnings Capability From Disability/Health Limitations: Toward A New Social Indicator," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 41(3), pages 289-308, September.
    27. Janet Currie & Enrico Moretti, 2003. "Mother's Education and the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Evidence from College Openings," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(4), pages 1495-1532.
    28. Jonathan A. Parker, 1999. "The Reaction of Household Consumption to Predictable Changes in Social Security Taxes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 959-973, September.
    29. Meer, Jonathan & Miller, Douglas L. & Rosen, Harvey S., 2003. "Exploring the health-wealth nexus," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(5), pages 713-730, September.
    30. Chang-Tai Hsieh, 2003. "Do Consumers React to Anticipated Income Changes? Evidence from the Alaska Permanent Fund," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 397-405, March.
    31. Mikael Lindahl, 2005. "Estimating the Effect of Income on Health and Mortality Using Lottery Prizes as an Exogenous Source of Variation in Income," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(1).
    32. Slemrod, Joel, et al, 1997. "April 15 Syndrome," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 35(4), pages 695-709, October.
    33. Backlund, Eric & Sorlie, Paul D. & Johnson, Norman J., 1999. "A comparison of the relationships of education and income with mortality: the national longitudinal mortality study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 49(10), pages 1373-1384, November.
    34. Wojciech Kopczuk & Joel Slemrod, 2003. "Dying to Save Taxes: Evidence from Estate-Tax Returns on the Death Elasticity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(2), pages 256-265, May.
    35. Stephens Melvin, 2006. "Paycheque Receipt and the Timing of Consumption," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(513), pages 680-701, July.
    36. de Walque, Damien, 2007. "Does education affect smoking behaviors?: Evidence using the Vietnam draft as an instrument for college education," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 877-895, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andersson, Elvira & Lundborg, Petter & Vikström, Johan, 2015. "Income receipt and mortality — Evidence from Swedish public sector employees," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 21-32.
    2. William N. Evans & Timothy J. Moore, 2009. "Liquidity, Activity, Mortality," NBER Working Papers 15310, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Fuchs-Schündeln, N. & Hassan, T.A., 2016. "Natural Experiments in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 923-1012, Elsevier.
    4. Albert, Aaron & Wozny, Nathan, 2023. "Income variation and excess sensitivity of goods-intensive leisure," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    5. Sumit Agarwal & Chunlin Liu & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2007. "The Reaction of Consumer Spending and Debt to Tax Rebates-Evidence from Consumer Credit Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(6), pages 986-1019, December.
    6. Nicholas S. Souleles & Jonathan A. Parker & David S. Johnson, 2006. "Household Expenditure and the Income Tax Rebates of 2001," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1589-1610, December.
    7. William N. Evans & Craig L. Garthwaite, 2014. "Giving Mom a Break: The Impact of Higher EITC Payments on Maternal Health," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 258-290, May.
    8. Melvin Stephens & Takashi Unayama, 2011. "The Consumption Response to Seasonal Income: Evidence from Japanese Public Pension Benefits," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 86-118, October.
    9. Scholnick, Barry, 2009. "Credit card use after the final mortgage payment: does the magnitude of income shocks matter?," Working Paper Series 1142, European Central Bank.
    10. Satoshi Shimizutani, 2017. "College tuition payment and household consumption in Japan," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 265-285, March.
    11. Broda, Christian & Parker, Jonathan A., 2014. "The Economic Stimulus Payments of 2008 and the aggregate demand for consumption," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(S), pages 20-36.
    12. Li, Teng & Qian, Wenlan & Xiong, Wei A. & Zou, Xin, 2022. "Employee output response to stock market wealth shocks," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 779-796.
    13. Agarwal, Sumit & Chomsisengphet, Souphala & Meier, Stephan & Zou, Xin, 2020. "In the mood to consume: Effect of sunshine on credit card spending," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    14. Frederik Plesner Lyngse, 2020. "Liquidity Constraints and Demand for Healthcare: Evidence from Danish Welfare Recipients," Papers 2010.14651, arXiv.org.
    15. Sumit Agarwal & Leslie McGranahan, 2012. "Spending responses to state sales tax holidays," Working Paper Series WP-2012-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
    16. Frederik Plesner Lyngse, 2020. "Liquidity Constraints and Demand for Healthcare: Evidence from Danish Welfare Recipients," CEBI working paper series 20-28, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    17. Dobkin, Carlos & Puller, Steven L., 2007. "The effects of government transfers on monthly cycles in drug abuse, hospitalization and mortality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(11-12), pages 2137-2157, December.
    18. Lusardi, Annamaria & Mitchell, Olivia S., 2007. "The reaction of consumer spending and debt to tax rebates: Evidence from consumer credit data," CFS Working Paper Series 2008/01, Center for Financial Studies (CFS).
    19. Ni, Shawn & Seol, Youn, 2014. "New evidence on excess sensitivity of household consumption," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 80-94.
    20. Oscar Erixson, 2017. "Health responses to a wealth shock: evidence from a Swedish tax reform," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(4), pages 1281-1336, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15311. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.