Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/327657 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 12047
Publisher: 
Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research - CESifo GmbH, Munich
Abstract: 
We study the effect of royalty status - historically rooted legal privilege enjoyed by hereditary monarchs - on human longevity, a proxy of individuals' health capital. We disentangle royalty status that encompassed serving as heads of state, and hence subject to status-related stress, from other family members alongside their contemporary countrymen. We exploit a dataset containing relevant demographic data and specifically the lifespan (age at death) of European Royals and their families spanning the past three centuries (1669 to 2022) from the sixteen European countries, including information for 845 high-status nobility and relative monarchs which is compared to otherwise similar countrymen by adjusting for relevant confounders. We document robust evidence of a statistically significant gap in life expectancy between monarchs and other members of the royal family, as well as between monarchs and the general population of an average of 5.2 to 7.1 years longer than their contemporaneous countrymen.
Subjects: 
royal family
monarchy
life expectancy
health inequality
social determinants of health
healthy lifestyles
universal health insurance
age at death
JEL: 
I18
N13
P00
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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