The Effects of World War II on Economic and Health Outcomes across Europe

Iris Kesternich, Bettina M Siflinger, James P. Smith, Joachim Winter

2013-01-09articleThe Review of Economics and Statistics259 citationsgreen

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

Historical Economic and Social Studies World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact Health and Conflict Studies

Abstract

We investigate long-run effects of World War II on socio-economic status and health of older individuals in Europe. We analyze data from SHARELIFE, a retrospective survey conducted as part of SHARE in Europe in 2009. SHARELIFE provides detailed data on events in childhood during and after the war for over 20,000 individuals in 13 European countries. We construct several measures of war exposure-experience of dispossession, persecution, combat in local areas, and hunger periods. Exposure to war and more importantly to individual-level shocks caused by the war significantly predicts economic and health outcomes at older ages.

Citations in this library

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 259 citations exist upstream.

References

2002Economic Status and Health in Childhood: The Origins of the Gradient

2009Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Socioeconomic Status, Poor Health in Childhood, and Human Capital Development

2004Women, War, and Wages: The Effect of Female Labor Supply on the Wage Structure at Midcentury

2007Height, health, and development

2004The strategic bombing of German cities during World War II and its impact on city growth

2004The Long‐Run Educational Cost of World War II

2011Social Structure and Development: A Legacy of the Holocaust in Russia

2014The long-run impact of a traumatic experience on risk aversion

Cited by

2014The impact of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic on economic performance in Sweden

2018Early life shocks and mental health: The long-term effect of war in Vietnam

2019A war is forever: The long-run effects of early exposure to World War II on trust

2021Impact of later retirement on mortality: Evidence from France

2021Does early-life war exposure of a CEO enhance corporate information transparency?

2014Are Public Sector Workers Different? Cross-European Evidence from Elderly Workers and Retirees

2024A digital self-help tool to promote mental well-being for Ukrainians affected by war - Assessing predictors of stress

2020The Micro–Macro Nexus: Rethinking the Relationship between Social Work, Social Policy and Wider Policy in a Changing World