Cai Lixin, Mavromaras Kostas, Oguzoglu Umut
Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
Health Econ. 2014 May;23(5):516-28. doi: 10.1002/hec.2931. Epub 2013 May 7.
We investigate the impact of health on working hours. This is in recognition of the fact that leaving the labour market because of persistently low levels of health status, or because of new health shocks, is only one of the possible responses open to employees. We use the first six waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey to estimate the joint effect of health status and health shocks on working hours. To account for zero working hours, we use a dynamic random effects Tobit model of working hours. We follow Heckman (1981) and approximate the unknown initial conditions with a static equation that utilises information from the first wave of the data. Predicted individual health status is used to ameliorate the possible effects of measurement error and endogeneity. We conclude that overall, lower health status results in fewer working hours and that when they occur, health shocks lead to further reductions in working hours. Estimation results show that the model performs well in separating the time-persistent effect of health status and the potentially more transient health shocks on working hours.
我们研究健康状况对工作时长的影响。这是因为认识到，由于健康状况持续不佳或遭遇新的健康冲击而离开劳动力市场，只是员工可能采取的应对方式之一。我们利用澳大利亚家庭、收入与劳动力动态（HILDA）调查的前六波数据，来估计健康状况和健康冲击对工作时长的联合效应。为了处理零工作时长的情况，我们采用了工作时长的动态随机效应 Tobit 模型。我们遵循赫克曼（1981）的方法，用一个利用数据第一波信息的静态方程来近似未知的初始条件。预测的个人健康状况用于减轻测量误差和内生性可能产生的影响。我们得出结论，总体而言，健康状况较差会导致工作时长减少，而且健康冲击一旦发生，会进一步导致工作时长的减少。估计结果表明，该模型在区分健康状况的时间持续性效应和对工作时长可能更短暂的健康冲击方面表现良好。
