The Effect of Cancer on the Employment of Older Males: Attenuating Selection Bias using a High Risk Sample

Abstract

Estimating the unbiased effect of health shocks on employment is an important topic in both health and labour economics. This is particularly relevant to cancer, where improvements in screening and treatments have led to increases in survival for nearly all types of cancer. In order to address the issue of selection bias, I estimate the effect of cancer on employment for a high-risk cancer sample, male workers over the age of 65, thus attenuating the impact of many cancer risk factors. This identification strategy balances the covariates between the cancer and the non-cancer groups in numerous tests. Respondents who are diagnosed with cancer are 13.2 percentage points less likely to work than their non-cancer counterparts. The results also appear insensitive to omitted confounders.