Non-monotonicity in the longevity-income relationship

In this essay, I empirically analyze the relationship between income and life expectancy for pensioners in the public pension system in Germany and find that the relationship is non-monotonic for major sub-groups in the data. Due to the application of non-parametric methods, this cannot be explained as an artifact of the estimation technique or by anomalies of the data, and the finding is robust against the inclusion of control variables. Furthermore, I theoretically derive a non-monotonic relationship between income and longevity, based on heterogeneous elasticities of labor supply and otherwise standard assumptions.