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Relying on comprehensive measures of financial knowledge, we provide evidence of a strong positive association between financial literacy and net worth, even after controlling for many determinants of wealth. We discuss two channels through which financial literacy might facilitate wealth accumulation. First, financial knowledge increases the likelihood of investing in the stock market, allowing individuals to benefit from the equity premium. Second, financial literacy is positively related to retirement planning and the development of a savings plan has been shown to boost wealth.

This article quantifies the association between individual income and remaining life expectancy at the statutory retirement age (65) in the Netherlands. For this purpose, we estimate a mortality risk model using a large administrative data set that covers the 1996—2007 period. Besides age and marital status, the model includes as covariates individual and spouse's income as well as a random individual specific effect. It thus allows for dynamic selection based on both observed and unobserved characteristics. We find that conditional on marital status, individual income is about equally strong and negatively associated with mortality risk for men and women and that spouse's income is only weakly associated with mortality risk for women. For both men and women, we quantify remaining life expectancy at age 65 for low-income individuals as approximately 2.5 years less than that for high-income individuals.

Background Previous studies on the persistence of child and adolescent mental healthcare do not consider the role of time-invariant individual characteristics. Estimating persistence of healthcare using standard linear models yields biased estimates due to unobserved heterogeneity and the autoregressive structure of the model. This study provides estimates of the persistence of child and adolescent mental healthcare taking these statistical issues into account. Methods We use registry data of more than 80,000 Dutch children and adolescents between 2000 and 2012 from the Psychiatric Case Registry Northern Netherlands (PCR-NN). In order to account for autocorrelation due to the presence of a lagged dependent variable and to distinguish between persistence caused by time-invariant individual characteristics and a direct care effect we use difference GMM-IV estimation. In further analyses we assess the robustness of our results to policy reforms, different definitions of care and diagnosis decomposition. Results All estimation results for the direct care effect (true state-dependence) show a positive coefficient smaller than unity with a main effect of 0.215 ( p <0.01), which indicates that the process is stable. Persistence of care is found to be 0.065 ( p <0.05) higher for females. Additionally, the majority of persistence of care appears to be associated with time-invariant characteristics. Further analyses indicate that (1) results are robust to different definitions of care and (2) persistence of care does not differ significantly across subgroups. Conclusions The results indicate that the majority of mental healthcare persistence for children and adolescents is due to time-invariant individuals characteristics. Additionally, we find that in the absence of further shocks a sudden increase of 10 care contacts in the present year is associated with an average of less than 3 additional care contacts at some point in the future. This result provides essential information about the necessity of budget increases for future years in the case of exogenous increases in healthcare use.

This paper examines the relationship between household consumption and financial literacy. The economic framework is a simple life-cycle model of consumption in which financial literacy affects the rate of return on assets. The theoretical predictions are that, for plausible values of the intertemporal elasticity of substitution, financial literacy is positively related to both the level of consumption and consumption growth. We empirically test these theoretical predictions with Dutch data from the LISS household panel. Our results provide evidence in favour of a positive association between non-durable consumption, and in particular food consumption, and financial literacy. No evidence is, however, found in favour of an association between consumption growth and financial literacy.

We present new evidence on financial literacy and retirement preparation in the Netherlands based on two surveys conducted before and after the onset of the financial crisis. We document that while financial knowledge did not increase from 2005 to 2010, in 2010 significantly more individuals report having thought about their retirement. Using information on financial conditions and financial knowledge of relatives, we find a positive causal effect of financial literacy on retirement preparation. Employing the panel feature of our dataset, we show that the effect of financial knowledge on retirement planning is bound to be positive.

To examine the relation between physical and psychological health indicators at adolescence (age 18) and household, personal, and nursing home care use later in life at ages 57-69 years. Using medical examinations on men born in 1944-1947 who were evaluated for military service at age 18 in the Netherlands, we link physical and psychological health assessments to national administrative microdata on the use of home care services at ages 57-69 years. We postulate a panel probit model for home care use over these years. In the analyses, we account for selective survival through correlated panel probit models. Poor mental health and being overweight at age 18 are important predictors of later life home care use. Home care use at ages 57-69 years is also highly related to and interacts with father's socioeconomic status and recruits' education at age 18. Specific health characteristics identified at age 18 are highly related to the later utilization of home-care at age 57-69 years. Some characteristics may be amenable to early life health interventions to decrease the future costs of long-term home care.

Objective To estimate the impact of glycaemic control and time since diabetes diagnosis on care costs incurred by people with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Research design and methods Random-effects linear regression models were run to test the impact of average glucose control (HbA1c) and time since diabetes diagnosis on total care spending in people with T2DM, adjusting for year of onset and other covariates. Two datasets were linked, Vektis (healthcare costs reimbursed by the Dutch mandatory health insurance) and Zodiac (clinical and sociodemographic data). The sample includes 22,612 observations, grouped in 5653 individuals from the Northern part of the Netherlands, covering 4 years (2008-2011). Results A 1% point increase in HbA1c is associated with a 2.2% higher total care costs. However, when treatment modality is included, the results are modified. A 1% point increase (11 mol/mol) in HbA1c is significantly associated with 3.4% higher total care costs for individuals without glucose-lowering treatment. Being treated with insulin is significantly associated with an increase in costs of 30-38% for every additional percentage point of HbAlc, depending on the covariates included. Without controlling for year of onset, an additional year of diabetes duration relates to 2.6% higher care costs, while this is 4.9% controlling for year of onset. The effect of HbA1c and diabetes duration differs between types of costs. Conclusion HbA1c, insulin treatment and diabetes duration are the main drivers of increasing care costs. The results signal the relevance of controlling for HbA1c together with treatment modality, diabetes duration and year of diagnosis effects.

Introduction: This study examined whether factors related to general practice mental health professionals (GP-MHPs), that is, characteristics of the professional, the function, and the care provided, were associated with short-term effectiveness and efficiency of the care provided by GP-MHPs to adults in Dutch general practice. Methods: A prospective cohort study was conducted among 320 adults with anxiety or depressive symptoms who had an intake consultation with GP-MHPs (n = 64). Effectiveness was measured in terms of change in quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) 3 months after intake; and efficiency in terms of net monetary benefit (NMB) at 3-month follow-up. A range of GP-MHP-related predictors and patient-related confounders was considered. Results: Patients gained on average 0.022 QALYs at 3-month follow-up. The mean total costs per patient during the 3-month follow-up period (€3,864; 95% confidence interval [CI]: €3,196-€4,731) decreased compared to that during the 3 months before intake (€5,220; 95% CI: €4,639–€5,925), resulting largely from an increase in productivity. Providing mindfulness and/or relaxation exercises was associated with QALY decrement. Having longer work experience as a GP-MHP (≥2 years) and having 10-20 years of work experience as a mental health care professional were negatively associated with NMB. Furthermore, a higher number of homework exercises tended to be related to less efficient care. Finally, being self-employed and being seconded from an organization in which primary care and mental health care organizations collaborate were related to a positive NMB, while being seconded from a mental health organization tended towards such a relationship. Conclusions: Findings seem to imply that the care provided by GP-MHPs contributes to improving patients’ functioning. Some GP-MHP-related characteristics appear to influence short-term effectiveness and efficiency of the care provided. Further research is needed to confirm and better explain these findings and to examine longer-term effects.

We document strikingly similar gender differences in financial literacy across countries. When asked to answer questions that measure knowledge of basic financial concepts, women are less likely than men to answer correctly and more likely to indicate that they do not know the answer. Both young and old women show low levels of financial literacy. Moreover, women for whom financial knowledge is likely to be very important—for example widows or single women—also know little about concepts relevant for day-to-day financial decisions. The gender differences are present for very basic as well as more advanced measures of financial literacy. This is important because financial literacy has been linked to economic behavior, including retirement planning and wealth accumulation. Women live longer than men and are likely to spend time in widowhood. Thus, improving women's financial literacy is key to helping them prepare for retirement and promoting their financial security.