Essays on wealth, health, and data collection

Abstract

One of the aims of social insurance programs is to provide

a financial safety net to households when encountering adverse circumstances.

However, apart from offering mere protection, a system of social insurance

can also be designed with the aim to increase overall welfare. In order to make the appropriate design decisions one needs to understand how individuals react to both negative shocks, such as health and wealth shocks, and the system put in place to protect them from these shocks. To gain understanding on such behavioral effects, access to high quality microdata is crucial. This thesis contains four essays aiming to generate empirical insights to facilitate the design of social insurance program. It focusses on changes in consumption preferences in reaction to health and wealth shocks, the effectivity of complementary efforts to sickness benefits programs, and methods to construct the surveys needed to gain these empirical insights.