PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Lindahl, Mikael
TI  - Estimating the Effect of Income on Health and Mortality Using Lottery Prizes as an Exogenous Source of Variation in Income
AID  - 10.3368/jhr.XL.1.144
DP  - 2005 Jan 01
TA  - Journal of Human Resources
PG  - 144--168
VI  - XL
IP  - 1
4099  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/XL/1/144.short
4100  - http://jhr.uwpress.org/content/XL/1/144.full
SO  - J Hum Resour2005 Jan 01; XL
AB  - A vast literature has established a strong positive relation between income and health status and a negative relation with mortality. This paper studies the effects of income on health and mortality, using only the part of income variation due to a truly exogenous factor: monetary lottery prizes of individuals. The findings are that higher income causally generates good health and that this effect is of a similar magnitude as when traditional estimation techniques are used. A 10 percent income increase improves health by about 4–5 percent of a standard deviation.