世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

计量经济分析 = Econometric analysis

2018 ESC/ESH Guidelines for the management of arterial hypertension.

As GDP is a measure of market capacity and not economic well-being, this report has been commissioned to more accurately understand the social progress indicators of any given state. Gross domestic product (GDP) is the most widely used measure of economic activity. There are international standards for its calculation, and much thought has gone into its statistical and conceptual bases. But GDP mainly measures market production, though it has often been treated as if it were a measure of economic well-being. Conflating the two can lead to misleading indications about how well-off people are and entail the wrong policy decisions. One reason why money measures of economic performance and living standards have come to play such an important role in our societies is that the monetary valuation of goods and services makes it easy to add up quantities of a very different nature. When we know the prices of apple juice and DVD players, we can add up their values and make statements about production and consumption in a single figure. But market prices are more than an accounting device. Economic theory tells us that when markets are functioning properly, the ratio of one market price to another is reflective of the relative appreciation of the two products by those who purchase them. Moreover, GDP captures all final goods in the economy, whether they are consumed by households, firms or government. Valuing them with their prices would thus seem to be a good way of capturing, in a single number, how well-off society is at a particular moment. Furthermore, keeping prices unchanged while observing how quantities of goods and services that enter GDP move over time would seem like a reasonable way of making a statement about how society’s living standards are evolving in real terms. As it turns out, things are more complicated. First, prices may not exist for some goods and services (if for instance government provides free health insurance or if households are engaged in child care), raising the question of how these services should be valued. Second, even where there are market prices, they may deviate from society’s underlying valuation. In particular, when the consumption or production of particular products affects society as a whole, the price that individuals pay for those products will differ from their value to society at large. Environmental damage caused by production or consumption activities that is not reflected in market prices is a well-known example.

https://andrewoswald.com/docs/stiglitz20report_commission20final20200920sept.pdf

Report by the commission on the measurement of economic performance and social progress

This paper introduces a three-item "Cognitive Reflection Test" (CRT) as a simple measure of one type of cognitive ability—the ability or disposition to reflect on a question and resist reporting the first response that comes to mind. The author will show that CRT scores are predictive of the types of choices that feature prominently in tests of decision-making theories, like expected utility theory and prospect theory. Indeed, the relation is sometimes so strong that the preferences themselves effectively function as expressions of cognitive ability—an empirical fact begging for a theoretical explanation. The author examines the relation between CRT scores and two important decision-making characteristics: time preference and risk preference. The CRT scores are then compared with other measures of cognitive ability or cognitive "style." The CRT scores exhibit considerable difference between men and women and the article explores how this relates to sex differences in time and risk preferences. The final section addresses the interpretation of correlations between cognitive abilities and decision-making characteristics.

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Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making

This paper presents a model of consumer demand that is consistent with the observed expenditure patterns of individual consumers in a long time series of expenditure surveys and is also able to provide a detailed welfare analysis of shifts in relative prices. A nonparametric analysis of consumer expenditure patterns suggests that Engel curves require quadratic terms in the logarithm of expenditure. While popular models of demand such as the Translog or the Almost Ideal Demand Systems do allow flexible price responses within a theoretically coherent structure, they have expenditure share Engel curves that are linear in the logarithm of total expenditure. We derive the complete class of integrable quadratic logarithmic expenditure share systems. A specification from this class is estimated on a large pooled data set of U.K. households. Models that fail to account for Engel curvature are found ro generate important distortions in the patterns of welfare losses associated with a tax increase.

/pdf/quadratic-engel-curves-and-consumer-demand-4g4urt7e3m.pdf

Quadratic Engel Curves and Consumer Demand

The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) is a panel study of a representative cohort of men and women living in England aged ≥50 years. It was designed as a sister study to the Health and Retirement Study in the USA and is multidisciplinary in orientation, involving the collection of economic, social, psychological, cognitive, health, biological and genetic data. The study commenced in 2002, and the sample has been followed up every 2 years. Data are collected using computer-assisted personal interviews and self-completion questionnaires, with additional nurse visits for the assessment of biomarkers every 4 years. The original sample consisted of 11 391 members ranging in age from 50 to 100 years. ELSA is harmonized with ageing studies in other countries to facilitate international comparisons, and is linked to financial and health registry data. The data set is openly available to researchers and analysts soon after collection (http://www.esds.ac.uk/longitudinal/access/elsa/l5050.asp).

/pdf/cohort-profile-the-english-longitudinal-study-of-ageing-41eokgnud6.pdf

Cohort Profile: The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

ContextThe United States spends considerably more money on health care than the United Kingdom, but whether that translates to better health outcomes is unknown.ObjectiveTo assess the relative heath status of older individuals in England and the United States, especially how their health status varies by important indicators of socioeconomic position.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsWe analyzed representative samples of residents aged 55 to 64 years from both countries using 2002 data from the US Health and Retirement Survey (n = 4386) and the English Longitudinal Study of Aging (n = 3681), which were designed to have directly comparable measures of health, income, and education. This analysis is supplemented by samples of those aged 40 to 70 years from the 1999-2002 waves of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (n = 2097) and the 2003 wave of the Health Survey for England (n = 5526). These surveys contain extensive and comparable biological disease markers on respondents, which are used to determine whether differential propensities to report illness can explain these health differences. To ensure that health differences are not solely due to health issues in the black or Latino populations in the United States, the analysis is limited to non-Hispanic whites in both countries.Main Outcome MeasureSelf-reported prevalence rates of several chronic diseases related to diabetes and heart disease, adjusted for age and health behavior risk factors, were compared between the 2 countries and across education and income classes within each country.ResultsThe US population in late middle age is less healthy than the equivalent British population for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, myocardial infarction, stroke, lung disease, and cancer. Within each country, there exists a pronounced negative socioeconomic status (SES) gradient with self-reported disease so that health disparities are largest at the bottom of the education or income variants of the SES hierarchy. This conclusion is generally robust to control for a standard set of behavioral risk factors, including smoking, overweight, obesity, and alcohol drinking, which explain very little of these health differences. These differences between countries or across SES groups within each country are not due to biases in self-reported disease because biological markers of disease exhibit exactly the same patterns. To illustrate, among those aged 55 to 64 years, diabetes prevalence is twice as high in the United States and only one fifth of this difference can be explained by a common set of risk factors. Similarly, among middle-aged adults, mean levels of C-reactive protein are 20% higher in the United States compared with England and mean high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels are 14% lower. These differences are not solely driven by the bottom of the SES distribution. In many diseases, the top of the SES distribution is less healthy in the United States as well.ConclusionBased on self-reported illnesses and biological markers of disease, US residents are much less healthy than their English counterparts and these differences exist at all points of the SES distribution.

/pdf/disease-and-disadvantage-in-the-united-states-and-in-england-302vz07ibc.pdf

Disease and Disadvantage in the United States and in England

Objective: A number of mechanisms have been proposed through which social isolation and loneliness may affect health, including health-related behavioral and biological factors. However, it is unclear to what extent isolation and loneliness are independently associated with these pathways. The objective of the present analysis was to determine the impact of social isolation and loneliness, individually as well as simultaneously, on health-related behavioral and biological factors using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA). Method: Data on health behaviors (smoking and physical activity) were analyzed from 8,688 participants and data on blood pressure, cholesterol, and inflammatory markers were analyzed from over 5,000 of these participants who were eligible for a nurse visit and blood sampling. Loneliness was measured using the short form of the Revised UCLA scale and an index of social isolation was computed incorporating marital status; frequency of contact with friends, family, and children; and participation in social activities. Results: Fewer than 2% of participants reported being lonely all the time, while nearly 7% had the highest possible scores on social isolation. Both social isolation and loneliness were associated with a greater risk of being inactive, smoking, as well as reporting multiple health-risk behaviors. Social isolation was also positively associated with blood pressure, C-reactive protein, and fibrinogen levels. Conclusions: Loneliness and social isolation may affect health independently through their effects on health behaviors. In addition, social isolation may also affect health through biological processes associated with the development of cardiovascular disease.

/pdf/loneliness-social-isolation-and-behavioral-and-biological-4l2wxag5z9.pdf

Loneliness, Social Isolation, and Behavioral and Biological Health Indicators in Older Adults

In this paper we ask whether households are saving enough for their retirement. We use data on income, expenditure and expenditure components to analyse patterns of behaviour at and around the time of retirement. For successive date-of-birth cohorts we compare periods of unemployment to periods of retirement and separate expenditures into categories reflecting work-related expenditures, basic necessities and other goods. We find that income typically falls by more at unemployment than retirement, but the reverse is true for expenditure. We observe falls in expenditure at retirement for all expenditure categories. Using a stochastic life-cycle model including mortality rates we assess the anticipated impact of retirement on consumption against that of unemployment. The inter-relationship between goods and leisure explains a large part of the persistent fall in expenditure at retirement. We argue that the only way in which the life-cycle hypothesis could be reconciled with the remaining unanticipated dip in consumption would be with the systematic arrival of unexpected adverse information at the time of retirement.

/pdf/is-there-a-retirement-savings-puzzle-24v2ovn0pr.pdf

James Banks

Papers

Quadratic Engel Curves and Consumer Demand

Cohort Profile: The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

Disease and Disadvantage in the United States and in England

Loneliness, Social Isolation, and Behavioral and Biological Health Indicators in Older Adults

Is there a retirement-savings puzzle?