Anton Nilsson

Adolescent health and adult labor market outcomes

Whereas a large literature has shown the importance of early life health for adult socioeconomic outcomes, there is little evidence on the importance of adolescent health. We contribute to the literature by studying the impact of adolescent health status on adult labor market outcomes using a unique and large-scale dataset covering almost the entire population of Swedish males. We show that most types of major conditions have long-run effects on future outcomes, and that the strongest effects result from mental conditions. Including sibling fixed effects or twin pair fixed effects reduces the magnitudes of the estimates, but they remain substantial.

Smoking and early retirement due to chronic disability

&NA; This paper considers the long‐term effects of smoking on disability retirement in Sweden. Smoking is known to have damaging effects on health, but there is limited evidence on how the effects of smoking translate into worse labour market outcomes, such as the inability to work. In contrast to the few previous studies on smoking and disability retirement, we use a large population sample with registry information on smoking, which is recorded for all women who give birth in Sweden. Thanks to these comprehensive data, we are able to account for a much broader range of potential confounders. In particular, by the use of sibling and twin fixed effects, we account for unobserved heterogeneity in childhood environment and family characteristics. Given that smoking is often initiated in adolescence, one would suspect such factors to play important roles. Among individuals aged 50–64 in 2011, a simple model suggested smokers to have a 5 percentage point higher probability of receiving (full) disability pension, making them more than twice as likely as non‐smokers to receive this. However, in a model with sibling fixed effects, the size of the effect was reduced by more than a third. The results point to the importance of confounders, such as childhood circumstances or behaviours, which were not accounted for by previous studies. We also consider effects on disability due to different health conditions. In relative terms, effects are the largest for circulatory conditions and tumours. Results are largely driven by health problems severe enough to merit hospitalization, and there is no evidence of a role played by financial incentives. HighlightsWe examine the relationships between smoking and disability retirement.We use large registry data, comparing outcomes of siblings as well as twins.We find strong associations, with naïve OLS yielding results similar to previous studies.Unobserved family confounders explain almost half of the OLS estimate, but a large effect remains.Relative effects are strongest for disability retirement due to circulatory conditions and tumours.