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While the relationship between socioeconomic status and child health has been studied extensively in developed countries, evidence is limited for developing countries. This study makes an important contribution by examining the relationship between child health and household socioeconomic status in Vietnam, using household expenditure as an alternative measure. This also allows us to explore the mechanisms via which income affects child health, in which household consumption arguably plays a crucial role. We employ different measures of health that allow us to examine both long-run and short-run effects, and two alternative instrumental variables, the unemployment rate and rainfall deviation, to address the potential endogeneity of household expenditure. We find evidence of a strong positive impact of household expenditure on child health and the findings are consistent across age groups. Specifically, a 10% increase in expenditure will result in a weight gain of 213–541 g in a "typical" child. We also explore the effect of a range of exogenous adverse economic shocks on children's health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4932.2010.00638.x Byline: PREETY SRIVASTAVA (1) Keywords: C3; D1; I1 Abstract: Both anecdotal and empirical lines of evidence have pointed out that frequent binge drinking has far more serious consequences than occasional bingeing. As a result, a lower penalty for heavy drinking will be estimated by combining the heavy bingers with individuals who binge on rare occasions and are not necessarily less productive. This article explores the drinking-earnings relationship based on a finer distinction between frequent and occasional bingeing, and an extension to female subjects. It finds that frequent bingers experience reduced earnings whereas non-bingers and occasional bingers earn a positive premium over abstainers. Author Affiliation: (1)Centre for Health Economics, Monash University, Victoria, Australia Article note: Preety Srivastava, Centre for Health Economics, Monash University, Vic. 3800, Australia. Email: preety.srivastava@buseco.monash.edu.au

Measures of mental health are heavily relied upon to identify at-risk individuals. However, self-reported mental health metrics might be unduly affected by mis-reporting (perhaps stemming from stigma effects). In this article, we consider this phenomenon by focusing upon the mis-reporting of mental health using UK panel data from 1991 to 2018. In separate analyses of males and females, we examine how inaccurate reporting of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ - 12) measure, specifically its sub-components, can adversely affect the distribution of the index. The analysis suggests that individuals typically over report their mental health (especially so for males). The results are then used to adjust the GHQ - 12 score to take mis-reporting into account. We then compare the effects of the adjusted/unadjusted GHQ - 12 index when modelling a number of important economic transitions. Using the original index typically leads to an underestimate of the effect of poor mental health on transitions into improved economic states, for example, unemployment to employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient recruitment to Australia's most popular professional sporting competition, the Australian Football League (AFL), requires evaluators to assess athlete performances in many lower tier leagues that serve as pathways. These competitions and their games are frequent, widespread, and challenging to track. Therefore, independent, and reliable player performance statistics from these leagues are paramount. This data, however, is only meaningful to recruiters from AFL teams if accurate player positions are known, which was not the case for the competitions from which most players were recruited. This paper explains how this problem was recently solved, demonstrating a process of knowledge translation from academia to industry, that bridged an important gap between sports science, coaching and recruiting. Positional information which is only available from the AFL competition was used to benchmark and develop scientific classification methods using only predictor variables that are also measured in lower tier competitions. Specifically, a Multinomial Logistic model was constructed to allocate players into four primary positions, followed by a Binary Logit model for further refinement. This novel technique of using more complete data from top tier competitions to help fill informational deficiencies in lower leagues could be extended to other sports that face similar issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When modelling "social bads," such as illegal drug consumption, researchers are often faced with a dependent variable characterised by a large number of zero observations. Building on the recent literature on hurdle and double-hurdle models, we propose a double-inflated modelling framework, where the zero observations are allowed to come from the following: nonparticipants; participant misreporters (who have larger loss functions associated with a truthful response); and infrequent consumers. Due to our empirical application, the model is derived for the case of an ordered discrete-dependent variable. However, it is similarly possible to augment other such zero-inflated models (e.g., zero-inflated count models, and double-hurdle models for continuous variables). The model is then applied to a consumer choice problem of cannabis consumption. We estimate that 17% of the reported zeros in the cannabis survey are from individuals who misreport their participation, 11% from infrequent users, and only 72% from true nonparticipants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses data from the 2004-2006 Australian National Survey of Adult Oral Health and a simultaneous equation framework to investigate the interrelationships between dental health, private dental insurance and the use of dental services. The results show that insurance participation is influenced by social and demographic factors, health and health behaviours. In turn, these factors affect the use of dental services, both directly and through insurance participation. Our findings confirm that affordability is a major barrier to visiting the dentist for oral health maintenance and treatment. Our results suggest that having supplementary insurance is associated with some 56 percentage points higher probability of seeing the dentist in the general population. For those who did not have private insurance cover, we predict that conditional on them facing the same insurance conditions, on average, having insurance would increase their visits to the dentist by 43 percentage points. The uninsured in the survey have lower income, worse oral health and lower rates of preventive and treatment visits. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]