Published Research
Below you will find my published work, whether working paper, journal article or any other format. For unpublished ongoing work please see the ongoing projects section.
Journal Publications
Mental health effects of intensive informal caregiving (>10h per week) in the Netherlands and the UK.
Care Work and Health: Many countries promote informal care to address rising long-term-care needs. This study examines the mental and physical health impact of providing informal care on caregivers in the Netherlands and the UK, using matched samples of over 1,700 caregivers per country. Results reveal negative mental health effects, particularly for those providing over 10 hours of care weekly and balancing full-time employment alongside this.
Bom, J., & Stöckel, J. (2021). Is the grass greener on the other side? The health impact of providing informal care in the UK and the Netherlands. Social Science & Medicine, 269, 113562.
Valuing Health Gains and Losses: Economic evaluations of health policies require estimates of the monetary equivalent value of health gains and losses, often expressed as € per quality-adjusted life year (QALY). This study applies the well-being valuation approach using German panel data, estimating values ranging from €20,000–60,000 per QALY, highlighting ongoing methodological challenges.
The variation of estimated monetary values of one year lived in full health using German wellbeing data.
Himmler S., Stöckel J., van Exel J., and Brouwer W. B. F. (2021). The value of health - Empirical issues when estimating the monetary value of a quality-adjusted life year based on well-being data. Health Economics, 30(8), 1849-1870.
[Open Access] [Working Paper] [Code: Github / OSF]
The short- and long-term effects of providing informal care by caregiving intensity.
Long-Term Health Effects of Care Work: This study explores the long-term health effects of informal caregiving in the UK, using a doubly-robust design combining matching and difference-in-differences approaches. Results show significant negative mental health impacts for those providing over 20 hours of weekly care. Dynamic analysis confirms these effects persist for high-intensity caregivers over multiple years.
Stöckel, J., & Bom, J. (2022). Revisiting Longer-term Health Effects of Informal Caregiving: Evidence from the UK. Journal of the Economics of Ageing, 21, 100343.
Adaptation to Health Changes: Health deterioration impacts quality of life, but adaptation theory suggests partial recovery in well-being over time. Using data from 9,543 UK participants, this study finds that disability onset leads to significant declines in self-assessed health and life satisfaction, followed by partial adaptation. Variation by demographic and severity highlights adaptation’s importance in health-related quality of life studies.
Changes in life satisfaction by disease severity and time since disease onset along the life satisfaction distribution.
Stöckel, J., van Exel, J., and Brouwer W. B. F. (2023). Adaptation in Life Satisfaction and Self-Assessed Health to Disability - Evidence from the UK. Social Science & Medicine, 328, 115996.
[Open Access] [Code: Github / OSF]
Other Publications
Mental and physical health trajectories over the life course.
In January 2024 I defended my PhD at Erasmus University Rotterdam which also published my dissertation comprising five empirical chapters, four of which have by now been published (see above). As part of my defense I prepared a short “Layman’s talk" and the customary propositions to be defended alongside the contents of the dissertation.
Cover of my PhD dissertation. Click here for the full thesis and supplementary materials.
My dissertation covered a broad range of topics within empirical health economics from identifying monetary equivalent valuations of health changes, the consequences of providing informal care for family caregivers, and the impact of health shocks on health perceptions, life satisfaction and behaviors of patients and their spouses.
The research in my thesis relied on survey-based subjective outcome measures such as survey responses to questions like “how good would you say your health is overall?“ or “how satisfied are you with your life?“. Intuitively such questions are very crude approximates for health or happiness, nonetheless they can provide at times unique insights to understanding the impact of health changes over the life-course.
In a ham-fisted attempt to reflect this wide gap between the objects of interest (e.g., health) and its approximate (a survey question with a handful of response categories) I modelled the cover after Magritte’s The Treachery of Images with help from ChatGPT’s image creation powers and the designers at Ridderprint.nl.