Ageing and Health Incentives Lab (AHIL)

Costa-Font, J and Vilaplana-Prieto, C (2025). "The Hidden Value of Adult Informal Care in Europe." Health Economics, 2025, 34(7): 791-812.

Costa-Font, J and C. Vilaplana (2020) "More than One Red Herring’? Heterogeneous Ageing Effects on Healthcare Use". Health Economics, 2020, 29: 8-29.

Costa-Font, J, Jimenez-Martin, S and Vilaplana, C (2018) "Does Long-Term Care Subsidisation Reduce Hospital Admissions?". Journal of Health Economics, 2018, 58(1): 43–66

Leone, T and Hessel, P (2016) "The effect of social participation on the subjective and objective health status of the over-fifties: evidence from SHARE". Ageing and Society.

Leone, T et al (2012) "Inpatient care of the elderly in Brazil and India: Assessing social inequalities". Social Science & Medicine, 75 (12).

Fabiani de Leva, B, Costa-Font, J, Aranco, N, Stampini, M and Ibarrarán, P (2025). "Funding options for long-term care services in Latin America and the Caribbean." The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, 30: 100550.

Costa-Font, J, Nicińska, A and Rossello Roig, M (2025). "Equal before luck? Well-being consequences of personal deprivation and transition." Social Science & Medicine, 376: 117975.

Costa-Font, J, Frank, R and Akaichi, F (2020). "Uninsured by Choice? Evidence from a Choice Experiment on Long Term Care Insurance". Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation, 2020, 173: 422-434.

Costa-Font, J, Frank, R and Swartz, K "Access to Long Term Care after a Wealth Shock: Evidence from the Housing Bubble and Burst". Journal of Economics of Ageing, 2019, 13: 103-110.

Bergquist, B Costa-Font, J and Swartz, K (2018). "Long-Term Care Partnerships: Are they ‘Fit for Purpose’?". Journal of Economics of Ageing, 2018, 12: 151-158.

Costa-Font, J and Vilaplana , C (2017). "Does the Expansion of Public Long-Term Care Funding Affect Savings Behaviour?" (with Vilaplana, C). Fiscal Studies, 2017, 38(3): 417-443.

Costa-Font, J, Jimenez-Martin, S and Viola, A (2021). "Fatal Underfunding? Explaining COVID-19 Mortality in Spanish Nursing Homes" (with Jimenez-Martin, S and Viola, A) . Journal of Aging and Health, 33(7-8): 607-617.

Costa-Font, J (2017). "Institutionalisation Aversion and the Willingness to Pay for Home Health Care". Journal of Housing Economics, 2017, 38: 62-69.

Costa-Font, J with Karlsson, M and H Øien (2016). "Careful in the Crisis? Determinants of Older People’s Informal Care Receipt in Crisis-Struck European Countries". Health Economics, 2016, 25(S2): 25-42.

Costa-Font, J and Courbage, C (2015). "Crowding Out of Long-Term Care Insurance: Evidence from European Expectations Data" (with Courbage, C). Health Economics, 2015, 24: S74–S88.

Costa-Font, J and Courbage, C , Swartz, K (2015). "Financing Long Term Care: Ex-Ante, Ex-Post or Both?". Health Economics, 2015, 24: S45–S57.

Costa-Font, J and Jofre-Bonet,M and Legrand, J (2020). "Vertical Transmission of Overweight: Evidence from English Adoptees". Food Policy, 2020, 97,101972.

Costa-Font, J and Gyori, Mario (2020). "The Weight of Patriarchy? The effect of gender empowerment on obesity gaps in the Middle East" (with Mario Gyori). Social Science and Medicine, 2020, 266, 113353.

Costa-Font, J and Jofre-Bonet,M (2020). "Is the Intergenerational Transmission of Overweight ‘Gender Assortative’?" Economics and Human Biology, 2020, 39, 100907.

Costa-Font, J and Fleche, S (2020). "Child Sleep and Maternal Labour Market Outcomes". Journal of Health Economics, 2020,69,102258.

Espie, A, Luik and Costa-Font, J (2019). "Effect of digital cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia on health, psychological well-being, and sleep-related quality of life: a randomized clinical trial", 2019, JAMA Psychiatry, 76 (1). 1-10.

Cheng, T, Costa-Font, J and Powdthavee, N (2018). "Do you have to win it to fix it? A longitudinal study of lottery winners and their health care demand". American Journal of Health Economics, 2018, 4(1): 26-50.

Costa-Font, J and Ljunge, M (2018). "The ‘Healthy Worker Effect’: Do Healthy People Climb the Occupational Ladder?". Economics and Human Biology, 2018, 28 (1):119-131.

Leone, T (2019). "Women’s mid-life health in Low and Middle Income Countries: A comparative analysis of the timing and speed of health deterioration in six countries". SSM Population Health, 7.

Leone, T et al (2018). "Age of despair or age of hope? Palestinian women's perspectives on midlife health". The Lancet.

Costa-Font, J., Hernandez-Quevedo, C., & Sato, A. (2018). A health ‘Kuznets’ curve’? Cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence on concentration indices’. Social indicators research, 136(2), 439-452.

Costa-Font, J., Hernandez-Quevedo, C and Jiménez-Rubio, D (2014). "Income Inequalities in Unhealthy Lifestyles in England and Spain". Economics and Human Biology, 2014, 13: 66-75.

1. Asaria, Miqdad & Costa-Font, Joan & Cowell, Frank A., 2021. "How Does Exposure to COVID-19 Influence Health and Income Inequality Aversion?," IZA Discussion Papers 14103, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

2. Costa-Font, Joan & Nicinska, Anna, 2020. "Comrades in the Family? Soviet Communism and Informal Family Insurance," IZA Discussion Papers 13850, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

3. Costa-Font, Joan & Gyori, Mario, 2020. "Can Unearned Income Make Us Fitter? Evidence from Lottery Wins," IZA Discussion Papers 13903, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

4. Joan Costa-i-Font & Belen Saenz de Miera Juarez, 2018. "Working Times and Overweight: Tight Schedules, Weaker Fitness?," CESifo Working Paper Series 7174, CESifo.

Expanding state private insurance partnership programs can help reduce public spending on long term care, Joan Costa-Font Nilesh Raut, LSE United States Politics and Policy Blog, 2025.

Health shocks make the elderly less likely to ‘age in place’. Joan Costa-Font and Cristina Vilaplana, LSE Business Review, 2023.

Is daylight saving time good for us? Joan Costa-Font, Sarah Flèche, and Ricardo Pagan, LSE Business Review, 2022.

The Covid-19 crisis reveals how much we value old age, Joan Costa-Font, LSE Business Review, 2020.

Behavioral Insights for Old Age Planning, Joan Costa-Font, BehavioralEconomics.com, 2020.

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  Workshop on Family and Healthy Ageing

  Co-organised by the Ageing and Health Incentives Lab (AHIL) at LSE & the Population Aging Research Centre (PARC) at the University of Pennsylvania

  Friday 18th October 2024 (Online)

  We were pleased to invite submissions for presentations for the Workshop on Family and Healthy Ageing, which focused on the role of the family and ageing, including cognition and caregiving at older age. It had a global focus and examined questions on the influence of the family, housing, intergenerational financial and personal interactions, social norms and the supply of care in old age.

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  Workshop on Healthy Ageing and Adult Caregiving

  Co-organised by the Ageing and Health Incentives Lab (AHIL) at LSE & the Population Aging Research Center (PARC) at UPenn

  25-26 October 2023 (Online)

  We invited submissions for a Workshop on Healthy Ageing and Caregiving, examining questions on the economics, demography and policy in high-, middle- and low-income settings.

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  We invited submissions for a Workshop on the Economics of Long-Term Care and Healthy Aging, which was jointly organized by IZA, CINCH, University of Duisburg-Essen and AHIL, London School of Economics on 10 June 2022. Researchers interested in participating submitted a full paper or extended abstract by 8 April 2022.

  More information.

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  TUESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2021, 1-2pm: DEPARTMENTAL WEBINAR SERIES

  Dr Richard Frank, Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution and Director of the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy

  Lasting Scars: The Impact of Depression in Early Adulthood on Subsequent Labour Market Outcomes

  In this study, we examine how depression in early adulthood affects subsequent labour market outcomes. We find that conditional on employment, people meeting diagnostic criteria for depression before age 36 have lower chances of being employed in occupations requiring non-routine cognitive skills, earn 10% lower hourly wages (conditional on occupation), work 120-180 fewer hours annually and earn 24% lower annual incomes. We find that 23% to 52% of the income penalty of early adult depression is attributed to its disruption of human capital accumulation and 22%-40% of the impact is attributed to its association with future depression.