Lottery Winners Don't Become Healthier

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution had a nifty transportation service concluding week, Lottery Winners Don't acquire Healthier (also taste the url.)

Wealthier people are healthier too alive longer. Why? One pop explanation is summarized inwards the documentary Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making us Sick?

The lives of a CEO, a lab supervisor, a janitor, too an unemployed woman raise illustrate how flat shapes opportunities for skillful health. Those on the superlative own got the most access to power, resources too chance – too hence the best health. Those on the bottom are faced amongst to a greater extent than stressors – unpaid bills, jobs that don’t pay enough, dangerous living conditions, exposure to environmental hazards, lack of command over function too schedule, worries over children – too the fewest resources available to assist them cope. 

The cyberspace number is a health-wealth gradient, inwards which every descending rung of the socioeconomic ladder corresponds to worse health.

If this were true, so increasing the wealth of a misfortunate someone would growth their health. That does non seem to move the case. In of import new research David Cesarini, Erik Lindqvist, Robert Ostling too Bjorn Wallace await at the wellness of lottery winners inwards Sweden (75% of winnings inside the gain of unopen to $20,000 to $800,000) and, importantly, on their children. Most effects on adults are reliably unopen to cypher too inwards no illustration tin wealth explicate a large percentage of the wealth-health gradient:

In adults, nosotros detect no evidence that wealth impacts mortality or wellness attention utilization.... Our estimates permit us to dominion out effects on 10-year mortality i 6th equally large equally the crosssectional wealth-mortality gradient.

The authors also await at the wellness effects on the children of lottery winners. There is to a greater extent than incertitude inwards the wellness estimates on children but most estimates cluster about cypher too developmental effects on things similar IQ tin move rejected (“In all viii subsamples, nosotros tin dominion out wealth effects on GPA smaller than 0.01 measure deviations”).

(My emphasis above)

Alex does non emphasize the most of import point, I think, of this study.  The natural inference is, The same things that brand y'all wealthy brand y'all healthy. The correlation betwixt wellness too wealth across the population reverberate 2 outcomes of the same underlying causes.

We tin speculate what those causes are.  (I haven't read the paper, mayhap the authors do.) Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 natural hypothesis is a whole ready of circumstances too lifestyle choices own got both wellness too wealth effects. These causes tin move either "right" or "left" equally far equally the evidence earlier us: "Right:" Thrift, difficult work, self dependent plain too construct clean living Pb to wellness too wealth. "Left:" skillful parents, skillful neighborhood, the correct social connections Pb to wellness too wealth.

Either way, but transferring coin volition non transfer the things that make money, too make health.

Perhaps the documentary was correct later all: "class shapes opportunities for skillful health."  But "class" is close to a greater extent than than a banking concern account.

Also, Alex tin move misread equally a chip besides critical: "If this were true." It is true that wellness too wealth are correlated. It is non truthful that to a greater extent than wealth causes improve health.  The work is  not precisely "resources available to assist them cope."

Why a weblog post? This storey is a gorgeous illustration of the i primal affair y'all acquire when doing empirical economics: Correlation is non causation. Always await for the contrary possibility, or that the 2 things correlated are both outcomes of something else, too changing Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 volition non acquit on B.   We seldom acquire an illustration that is so beautifully clear.

Update:  Melissa Kearney writes,

"Bill Evans too Craig Garthwaite own got an of import study [AER] showing that expansions of EITC benefits led to improvements inwards self-reported wellness status amid affected mothers. 

Their newspaper provides a prissy counterpoint to the Swedish lottery study, i that is arguably to a greater extent than relevant to the policy interrogation of whether to a greater extent than income would causally improve the wellness of low-income individuals inwards the U.S.

Thanks Melissa for pointing it out. This is interesting, but I'd rather non brand it to a dissection of studies hither -- precisely who takes wages of EITC benefits, how instruments too differences make too don't answer these problems. The principal indicate of my transportation service is non to answer i time too for all the interrogation -- how much does showers of coin improve people's heath -- but to indicate out amongst this forceful illustration for non-economists the possibility that widely reported correlations - rich people are healthier -- don't automatically hateful that coin showers enhance health.