Seminar «The Effect of Health Shocks on Labour Market Outcomes in Russia»

A joint research seminar of the Laboratory for Labour Market Studies and the Centre for Labour Market Studies was held at HSE on October 15, 2019.

Speaker: Venera Bagranova  (HSE Center for Market Studies and Spatial Economics).

Theme: The Effect of Health Shocks on Labour Market Outcomes in Russia.

This paper provides evidence on the effects of health shocks measured as an any negative change in self-assessed health on labour market outcomes in the Russian population. For the analysis we employ average treatment effect on the treated (ATET) estimator combined with kernel propensity-score matching and data from RLMS-HSE over the period of 2000-2017. We find that adverse health shocks are associated with a reduction of the probability of remaining employed by 2.1 percent and 3.2 percent in short- and long-run, respectively. For men this effect is slightly larger and we do not observe any statistically significant and robust effect for women. Severe health shocks measured as a drop in self-assessed health by two or more categories are associated with more substantial losses in the probability of remaining at work. Additionally, we find a positive significant effect on the probability of decreasing of a number of jobs or transition into informal employment for those who remain employed after a health deterioration.

Discussant: Anna Yurko (HSE International College of Economics and Finance).