Essays on Savings behavior, Health and Mortality

This dissertation is comprised of three self-contained chapters in applied micro-econometrics. All three chapters use Danish register data to answer empirical questions within the topics of savings behavior, measurement of health and mortality. In a quasi-experimental framework, the first chapter exploits policy variation in the Danish tax and pension systems in 1995-2005 to analyze the impact of different policy measures implemented to promote savings. We show that a key determinant of the effectiveness of savings policies is whether they induce active or passive savings decisions. The second chapter combines third party administrative hospitalization data and survey data, and shows that global self-rated health correlates with historic, current and future hospitalization, and that global self-rated health is not causing severe justification biases. In the third chapter we use long series of individual income data to construct permanent income measures for app. 1 million people. We show that permanent income estimates the economic gradient in mortality more robustly than annual income and wealth. We compare our findings to British studies, point at similarities in the Danish and the British mortality gradients, and conclude that resource levels rather than economic inequality per se determines the gradient in mortality.