Abstract
This paper aims at analysing two relevant dimensions of well-being: living a healthy life and social interaction. A link between the two dimensions of well-being has been highlighted in the literature. The model assumes that both these concepts, i.e. social interaction and healthy life, are latent and manifest themselves through a number of indicators. The indicators adopted are those available in the 2011 ISTAT survey on social inclusion of people with disability in Italy by comparing the well-being attainments with respect to the different levels of functional limitations. In this paper the available indicators are used simultaneously to study the level of social interaction and health through a multiple indicators multiple causes model. This allows us to deal directly with endogeneity issues. Results show that women have a lower achievement in social interaction and in health. Moreover, differences occur in the effect of the observable exogenous variables included in the model with a larger negative effect of ageing for women on their health status and a higher negative effect of ageing for men on social interaction. Education plays a significant role only for women for the healthy life dimension. Finally, the latent variable on social interaction has been found to positively affect, consistently with the literature, the health dimension.
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Acknowledgments
This paper is part of the research activities carried out within the PRIN research project “Measuring human development and capabilities in Italy: methodological and empirical issues” (prot. 2009NM89S5_004), by the Pescara and Modena units. It has been presented at the PRIN workshop in the Department of Economics of Pescara, 22-23 April 2013, at the X Jornadas de Economía Laboral held in Madrid in July 2013, at the AIEL conference on Labour Economics held in Rome in September 2013, at the SIE annual congress held in Bologna in October 2013, at the conference on “Care, Health and Well-being” held in Faro in January 2014, and at the HDCA conference on “Human Development in Times of Crisis” held in Athens in September 2014. We thank the participants for the stimulating comments provided on the previous versions of this paper. The usual disclaimers apply. All errors and omissions are those of the authors.
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Addabbo, T., Sarti, E. & Sciulli, D. Healthy life, social interaction and disability. Qual Quant 50, 2609–2623 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-015-0279-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-015-0279-9