Publications:
"Home vs. Nursing Care: Unpacking the Impact on Health and Well-Being'', E. Bassoli, M.Lefebvre and J.Schoenmaeckers (2025), forthcoming Social Science and Medicine DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118533
"How Gender Norms Shape the Health of Women and Men?" , Elena Bassoli (2025) forthcoming Social Science and Medicine, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118479
"Unequal care provision: Evidence from the SHARE-Corona Survey", with A. Brugiavini, (2024) Review of Economics of the Household . DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-024-09716-7
"End-of-life Care and Depression" with E.Bonsang, A. Brugiavini and G. Pasini (2023) Applied Economic Letters DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2022.2099516 (media coverage: here)
"An Empirical Analysis of Health-Dependent Utility on SHARE and ELSA data", Elena Bassoli, (2022) Italian Economic Journal . https://doi.org/10.1007/s40797-022-00208-0
"Changing Attitudes to Risk at Older Ages : The role of health and other life events" with J. Banks and I. Mammi (2020) Journal of Economic Psychology DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2019.102208 (blog post: here)
Chapters in books:
“Disease Prevalence Across Europe: New Evidence from SHARE“ with Agar Brugiavini and Giacomo Pasini, in "The Sustenability of Health Care Systems in Europe" by B. Baltagi and F. Moscone, (2021) Emerald Publishing (also blog post here)
``Did the pandemic change retirement trends?" with Belloni M., Brugiavini A., Gao Y., (2023) In ``Social, health, and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the epidemiological control measures", De Gruyter
Working Papers:
"What is the monetary cost of dementia in Europe?", with A. Brugiavini and L.Carrino (2024) [UNDER REVIEW]
This paper provides new evidence on the cost of long-term care for individuals and society by looking at the onset of dementia in a population of older individuals aged 50 and above. By exploiting the Survey of Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and the English Longitudinal Survey of Ageing (ELSA), we causally assess how a dementia shock affects commodities purchases and other domains of individual's life, in the short-run. We find that individuals reduce food consumption and increase rent and housing-related expenditures. We show that the demand for care is also affected, with an increase in both hospital, formal and informal care. Results are robust to alternative definitions of the shock and sensitivity analyses. Additionally, we discover spill-over effects on the spouse's well-being when the partner becomes sick. Finally, we compute the financial burden on individuals following a dementia diagnosis in terms of formal and informal care costs.
"The mental health consequences of spousal bereavement", joint with Emma Zai (Rostock Max Planck Institute) and Peter Eibich (Paris Dauphine) [UNDER REVIEW]
We examine the dynamic effects of the loss of a spouse on mental health. We use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) for 28 European countries over the period 2004-2022 and estimate event study regressions to examine how individuals’ mental health changes over the transition into widowhood. We find no evidence of changes in mental health before the death of a spouse due to anticipation or caregiving effects. Bereaved individuals experience up to 1.5 additional depressive symptoms and their risk of depression increases by around 20 percentage points, with similar effects for men and women. Individuals adapt relatively quickly and their risk of depression reverts to baseline levels within 3 years of the death. We provide suggestive evidence that this adaptation is in part due to increased rates of social participation. We also find some evidence that the impact on mental health is stronger for individuals living in Eastern Europe and in countries with strong family ties. In addition, individuals in countries with stronger family ties adapt less quickly.
"Working longer or opting out? Women's costly response to a recent pension reform", with Y. Brilli [in preparation for submission]
media: lavoce.info
This paper assesses how a recent and unexpected Italian pension reform changed the incentive to early retirement for women. The analysis uses rich Italian administrative data and it is based on a differences-in-discontinuities design. Identification exploits the facts that (i) women with just above 35 years of contributions are eligible for early retirement; (ii) women born in 1952 are the first cohort affected by the retirement age increase, while women born in 1951 are unaffected. The results indicate that the differential in retirement age between women with more than 35 years of contributions and women with less than 35 years of contributions decreases by 2 months when statutory age increased. As the early retirement option entails a penalty in the annuity, we also evaluate the reform's effect on women's pension amount. The findings indicate that the differential in annuity between the two groups decreases by about 5% for a lifetime. The effect is stronger for women with low labour market attachment and low education.