| Health patterns are becoming an increasingly important topic of study in applied economics. Inevitable changes to major entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare will be shaped by forces such as the maturation of the "Baby Boom" generation and new developments in healthcare. Crucial details of their dynamics remain open questions in the current literature. This dissertation aims to enhance our knowledge of health-affecting processes.;The first chapter examines the impact of retirement on individuals' health. Declining health commonly compels individuals to retire, so a key challenge is to bypass the reverse causal effect. I employ an instrumental variables strategy where the instrument includes workers' reported probabilities of working past ages 62 and 65, taken from the first period in which they are observed. Results indicate that retirement benefits future health, and its influence is most potent for individuals starting with average health. Investigation into smoking and exercise suggests that retirement affects health through behavioral channels; with additional leisure time, many retirees invest in their health via good habits.;The second chapter compares body mass index of immigrants in the U.S. to BMI of natives. Immigrants' BMI converges to natives' as their residency increases, and this effect persists after controlling for a large set of observable demographic and physical characteristics. The chapter also explores the root causes of this "catch-up effect," determining that it occurs primarily due to changes in immigrants' nutrition--they adopt higher fat, higher sugar diets as their U.S. residency lengthens. Additionally, changes in immigrants' physical activity levels contribute to the weight gain of younger generations more than older ones.;The third chapter investigates the influence of "justification bias" on survey-based health data. Justification bias is an ex-post rationalization in which retirees exaggerate their poor health in order to provide a socially acceptable reason for not working. Such bias pervades empirical studies of how health drives retirement decisions, models of health insurance, and other applications. This chapter identifies the presence of justification bias in self-reported health and proposes a type of health measurement that is less susceptible to the bias. |
