An analysis of health status and labor supply in Hong Kong

Abstract

This thesis investigates the factors that determine health, using data from the Omnibus Survey on Health-related Issues of the Hong Kong Population. We formulate three different simultaneous equations models to understand the causal relationship between health and employment. This is the first study that makes use of health and employment data for a Chinese population. Since health status is not directly and completely observable, self-reported health is used as a measure of the "true" health status. Because of the nonlinearity of the models we estimate, the maximum likelihood estimation procedure is used to obtain consistent estimates. We find that many behavioral and economic variables affect health status. One major finding is that the best model indicates that health status is not affected by employment status.

Date of Award	2001
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology