I compare two different ways of integrating mortality into life-cycle models: the standard additive model with time preferences, on the one hand, and a formulation that rules out the existence of time preference, but allows for risk aversion with respect to the length of life, on the other hand. These models are of similar complexity, but rather different in their fundamental assumptions. I show, however, that the latter formulation can reproduce all the predictions of the additive models with non-negative rates of time preference, as far as life-cycle behaviors under a single exogenous non-degenerate mortality pattern are considered. It leads, nonetheless, to radically different predictions for the effects of mortality changes.
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Paper provided by Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquee, INRA in its series Research Unit Working Papers with number
0314.
Find related papers by JEL classification: D91 - Microeconomics - - Intertemporal Choice and Growth - - - Intertemporal Consumer Choice; Life Cycle Models and Saving D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty J17 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Value of Life; Foregone Income
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Martin Feldstein & Jeffrey B. Liebman, 2001.
"Social Security,"
NBER Working Papers
8451, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Feldstein, Martin & Liebman, Jeffrey B., 2002.
"Social security,"
Handbook of Public Economics,
in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 32, pages 2245-2324
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)