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Does health affect portfolio choice?

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Author Info
Paul Smith
David Love

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Abstract

Previous studies find a strong and positive empirical connection between health status and the share of risky assets held in household portfolios. But is this relationship truly causal, in the sense that households respond to changes in health by altering their portfolio allocation, or does it simply reflect unobserved differences across households? We find that most of the variation by health is on the extensive margin of stock ownership (rather than the marginal allocation conditional on ownership), which more plausibly points to non-causal explanations. Moreover, we find that any link between health and risky assets depends crucially on the econometric treatment of unobserved heterogeneity. Once we account adequately for unobserved household differences, there is no longer a statistically significant relationship between any of our health measures and household portfolio decisions.

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Paper provided by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) in its series Finance and Economics Discussion Series with number 2007-45.

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Date of creation: 2007
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:2007-45

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Keywords: Households - Economic aspects ; Portfolio management;

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  6. Elmendorf, Douglas W & Kimball, Miles S, 2000. "Taxation of Labor Income and the Demand for Risky Assets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(3), pages 801-33, August.
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  7. Bound, John & Brown, Charles & Mathiowetz, Nancy, 2001. "Measurement error in survey data," Handbook of Econometrics, in: J.J. Heckman & E.E. Leamer (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 59, pages 3705-3843 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Honore, Bo E, 1992. "Trimmed LAD and Least Squares Estimation of Truncated and Censored Regression Models with Fixed Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(3), pages 533-65, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. Courtney Coile & Kevin Milligan, 2006. "How Household Portfolios Evolve After Retirement: The Effect of Aging and Health Shocks," NBER Working Papers 12391, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  20. Chamberlain, Gary, 1984. "Panel data," Handbook of Econometrics, in: Z. Griliches† & M. D. Intriligator (ed.), Handbook of Econometrics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 1247-1318 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  22. Jon Bakija, 2001. "The Effect of Taxes on Portfolio Choice: Evidence from Panel Data Spanning the Tax Reform Act of 1986," Department of Economics Working Papers 191, Department of Economics, Williams College. [Downloadable!]
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