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on Neuroeconomics |
| By: | Banks, James; French, Eric; McCauley, Jeremy |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the nature of long-term care for older adults with cognitive impairments in England. Long-term care (LTC), which in England is commonly referred to as adult social care, is care that supports daily activities of living for older and disabled individuals to enhance their quality of life. This includes care services ranging from nursing home stays to home-based assistance with tasks like washing, dressing, and eating. For older people with cognitive impairment, such as dementia for example, there may be additional specialized care and support that is necessary. This paper shows that the high care needs of older individuals is largely attributable to those with cognitive impairments: approximately half of the total care costs of the age 65+ population in England are attributable to the 8.5% of individuals with cognitive limitations. |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20783 |
| By: | Bhalotra, Sonia; Daysal, Meltem; Trandafir, Mircea |
| Abstract: | Mental health disorders tend to emerge in childhood, with half starting by age 14. This makes early intervention important, but treatment rates are low, and antidepressant treatment for children remains controversial since anFDAwarning in 2004 that highlighted adverse effects. Linking individuals across Danish administrative registers, we provide some of the first evidence of impacts of antidepressant treatment in childhood on objectively measured mental health indicators and economic outcomes over time, and the first attempt to investigate under- vs overtreatment. Leveraging conditional random assignment of patients to psychiatrists with different prescribing tendencies, we find that treatment during ages 8-15 improves test scores at age 16, particularly inMath, increases enrollment in post-compulsory education at age 18, and that it leads to higher employment and earnings and lower welfare dependence at ages 25–30. We demonstrate, on average, a reduction in suicide attempts, self-harm, and hospital visits following AD initiation. The gains to treatment are, in general, larger for low SES children, but they are less likely to be treated. Using a marginal treatment effects framework and Math scores as the focal outcome, we show positive returns to treatment among the untreated. Policy simulations confirm that expanding treatment among low SES children (and boys) generates substantial net benefits, consistent with under-treatment in these groups. Our findings underscore the potential of early mental health treatment to improve longer term economic outcomes and reducing inequality. |
| Keywords: | Denmark |
| JEL: | I11 I12 I18 J13 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20585 |
| By: | Garcia, Paul |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how early socio-emotional skills shape adolescent offending in England and the school pathways through which they operate. I use administrative data linking teacher-reported child development assessments at age five to school and criminal justice records through age 17. Factor analysis of these assessments reveals two underlying domains of early difficulty, cognitive and socio-emotional. Both raise the probability of a caution or conviction between ages 11 and 17 by around 15%, but through distinct channels. Cognitive difficulties act primarily through academic attainment, while socio-emotional difficulties operate largely through school exclusions yet retain a substantial direct effect, accounting for around 40% of the total effect. The socio-emotional effect is robust to unobserved school and family heterogeneity and shapes both the type and frequency of offending. Statutory support for learning difficulties and social care services attenuates the associations between early skill deficits and offending. These findings suggest that differentiated support is needed based on the type of difficulty. |
| Date: | 2026–07–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ese:iserwp:2026-02 |
| By: | Sevim, Dilek; Baranov, Victoria; Bhalotra, Sonia; Maselko, Joanna; Biroli, Pietro |
| Abstract: | We investigate the impacts of a perinatal psychosocial intervention on trajectories of maternal mental health and child skills, from birth to age 3. We find improved maternal mental health and functioning (0.17 to 0.29 SD), modest but imprecisely estimated improvements in parenting (0.07 to 0.11 SD), and transitory improvements in child socioemotional development (0.06 to 0.39 SD). The intervention had negligible influence on physical health and cognition. Estimates of a skill production function reveal the intervention attenuated the negative association between maternal depression and child outcomes, and narrowed outcome gaps between mothers who were and were not depressed in pregnancy. |
| Keywords: | Mental health; Gender |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20572 |
| By: | Paul Gregg (Department of Social & Policy Sciences, University of Bath); Yuyan Jiang (UCL Social Research Institute); Lindsey Macmillan (UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities); Nikki Shure (UCL Social Research Institute); Gill Wyness (UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities) |
| Abstract: | This paper provides new evidence on intergenerational income persistence for a recent UK cohort. Using Next Steps, a longitudinal study of people born in England in 1989-90 linked to administrative education records, we estimate the association between parental income in adolescence and sons' earnings at age 32, compare the results with the 1970 British Cohort Study, and decompose persistence by early cognitive skills, noncognitive traits and educational attainment. Our preferred estimates show an intergenerational income elasticity of 0.214 and a rank-rank coefficient of 0.287. The rank-rank estimate is almost identical to the comparable estimate for the 1970 cohort, suggesting little change in relative income persistence across cohorts, although age-32 elasticities are likely to understate lifetime persistence. Education is the main observed mechanism: GCSE attainment, A-level attainment and degree completion account for a substantial share of persistence, while measured noncognitive traits explain little once education is included. The findings show that, despite educational expansion, family-income gradients in attainment remain central to the intergenerational transmission of economic advantage. |
| Keywords: | intergenerational income mobility, socioeconomic inequality, education, skills |
| JEL: | I24 J62 J13 J31 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ucl:cepeow:26-06 |
| By: | Rong Fu; Sizhe Liu; Toshiaki Iizuka; Haruko Noguchi |
| Abstract: | Japan has the world’s oldest population and a universal Long-Term Care Insurance (LTCI) system, yet how care use and costs differ between cognitive and physical impairment remains underexamined. Using the nationally representative Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions (2016 and 2019 waves; 324, 466 adults aged 65 and older), we compare the utilization, intensity, and cost of long-term care across three groups: those with a dementia diagnosis (defined as regularly receiving medical treatment for dementia), those with physical (ADL) limitations but no dementia, and those with neither. A dementia diagnosis is associated with dramatically higher care use—75.3% receive some care, versus 5.3% of the unimpaired reference group. In models adjusting for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, dementia raises the probability of receiving formal care by 55 percentage points and informal care by 52 percentage points—roughly double the effects of ADL limitations—and, conditional on use, is associated with about 113 additional hours of formal care per month (some 60% more than physical limitations alone). We estimate formal-care costs at 1.07–4.03% of GDP (depending on the valuation method) and co-residing informal-care costs at 0.79% of GDP. Per-capita formal-care costs are substantially higher for those with dementia (about 3.5 versus 2.0 million JPY annually under the self-reported approach), whereas informal-care costs are nearly uniform across impairment types—underscoring the intensive, and largely invisible, contribution of family caregivers. With the dementia and mild-cognitive-impairment population projected to reach roughly 12 million by 2040, these findings point to mounting fiscal and family-care pressures from cognitive impairment in Japan. |
| JEL: | H51 I11 I18 J14 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35442 |
| By: | Bhalotra, Sonia; Delavande, Adeline; Font, Paulino; Maselko, Joanna |
| Abstract: | We investigate the importance of subjective expectations of returns to and effort costs of the two principal investments that mothers make in newborns: breastfeeding and stimulation. We find heterogeneity across mothers in rural Pakistan in expected effort costs and expected returns for outcomes in the cognitive, socio-emotional and health domains, and that this contributes to explaining heterogeneity in investments. We find no significant differences across women in preferences for child developmental outcomes. We simulate the impact of alternative policies on investments. Our findings highlight the relevance of interventions designed to address maternal depression and reduce perinatal fatigue alongside interventions that increase perceived returns to investments. |
| Keywords: | beliefs |
| JEL: | I12 I15 J24 |
| Date: | 2025–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20586 |
| By: | Christophe Haag (EM - EMLyon Business School) |
| Abstract: | Envy is commonly labeled a negative emotion, yet research distinguishes between benign envy, which motivates self-improvement, and malicious envy, which motivates hostility and derogation. Although both forms are unpleasant, they differ in their motivational consequences. Emotional intelligence (EI) has been linked to adaptive emotional functioning, but little is known about whether ability-based emotion regulation predicts the motivational orientation of envy. In a community sample of French adults (N = 442), we examined whether performance-based emotion regulation ability, assessed within the QEg (Generalized QEPro Ability Measure of Emotional Intelligence) model, predicted benign and malicious envy while controlling for attachment orientation, self-esteem, age, and gender. Regression and structural equation modeling analyses showed that emotion regulation ability positively predicted benign envy (β = 0.165; β = 0.192 in SEM) but was unrelated to malicious envy. A latent SEM comparison further indicated that the association with benign envy was significantly stronger than that with malicious envy. Exploratory analyses of the six additional QEg abilities showed that emotion regulation exhibited the strongest association with benign envy. These findings suggest that emotion regulation ability may shape the functional direction of unpleasant emotions rather than their occurrence or intensity, orienting envy toward constructive rather than destructive outcomes. |
| Keywords: | Emotional intelligence, Envy, Social comparison, Attachment |
| Date: | 2026–11–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05672270 |
| By: | Joan Costa-i-Font; Sergi Jimenez-Martin; Juan Oliva; Cristina Vilaplana-Prieto; Analía Viola |
| Abstract: | The growing prevalence of cognitive impairment (CI) is one of the main drivers of age-related demand for health and long-term care (LTC). In Spain, CI is estimated to affect 18.5% of Spaniards over 65, and 45.3% in those aged 85 and above. This paper draws on a pooled pre-COVID data from a longitudinal sample of individuals aged 65+ to examine the effect of CI and physical limitations on health and long-term care utilisation, estimates its costs, and financial burden. We report four sets of findings. First, we find that socioeconomic status at older age to be the strongest predictor of CI. Second, while both CI and physical limitations increase health and care adult care use, physical impairment is a stronger predictor of overall care utilisation (73% versus 55% for CI alone) and nursing home residence (2.0% versus 0.9%). Third, informal caregiving constitutes the overwhelming majority of dementia costs, accounting for 69–81% of the total. Finally, we estimate that the replacement cost of informal care would exhaust the full budget of Spain’s LTC system (SAAD). |
| JEL: | I18 I38 J14 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35464 |