*Along with the unprecedented improvements in health outcomes such as life expectancy in the last decades, it remains huge disparities in terms of longevity across countries, and even from individual to another. This may have consequences on social equity and on the economic development of a country. In this paper, we introduce heterogenous agents in an overlapping generations model with pollution and private/public health expenditures that affect the agents' length-of-life. Heterogeneity stems from households preferences for health, as a consequence of a minimum consumption requirement on other goods. Therefore, households do not choose the same level of private health expenditures and this generates health inequalities. In addition, the contribution to capital accumulation differs across individuals. However, an appropriate environmental policy may reduce health inequalities.

**The take-up of social assistance has been receiving increased attention among policy makers in recent years as it would apparently underpin the effectiveness of public intervention in alleviating from poverty. We examine whether receipt of private transfers affects the household decision to take-up social assistance (ALG II) in Germany between 2009 and 2011. We exploit the follow-up of households in the SOEP to reconstruct family ties and estimate a model of welfare participation with endogenous private transfers and family interaction effects. We find evidences that 20\% of welfare participation is crowded-out by private transfers reducing the welfare program costs. Moreover, private transfers appear to be an effective device for reducing inequality and poverty. We point out that the effectiveness of the public intervention depends on the network of private transfers. As a consequence, the take-up rate should be interpreted carefully as a higher non-take-up rate might reflect more private redistribution and in fine less poverty and inequality.