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Differential Mortality, Uncertain Medical Expenses, and the Saving of Elderly Singles

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Author Info
Mariacristina De Nardi () (Research Federal Reserve bank of Chicago)
Eric French
John Bailey Jones

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Abstract

People have heterogenous life expectancies: women live longer than men, rich people live longer than poor people, and healthy people live longer than sick people. People are also subject to heterogenous out-of-pocket medical expense risk. We show that all of these dimensions of heterogeneity are large for the elderly. Can these factors explain their lack of asset decumulation even at very advanced ages and the high saving rate of the income-rich elderly? We answer this question in two steps. We first estimate the uncertainty about mortality and out-of pocket medical expenditures as functions of sex, health, permanent income, and age. We then formalize a rich structural model of saving behavior for retired single households, and we estimate it by using the method of simulated moments

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Society for Economic Dynamics in its series 2006 Meeting Papers with number 46.

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Date of creation: 03 Dec 2006
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Handle: RePEc:red:sed006:46

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Related research
Keywords: Saving; elderly; differential mortality; medical expense risk;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth

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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.:
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, 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.)

  1. Purvi Sevak & Lina Walker, 2007. "The Responsiveness of Private Savings to Medicaid Long Term Care Policies," Working Papers wp150, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center. [Downloadable!]
  2. Karsten Jeske & Sagiri Kitao, 2007. "U.S. tax policy and health insurance demand: can a regressive policy improve welfare?," Working Paper 2007-13, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. John Ameriks & Andrew Caplin & Steven Laufer & Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, 2007. "The Joy of Giving or Assisted Living? Using Strategic Surveys to Separate Bequest and Precautionary Motives," NBER Working Papers 13105, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Robert S. Gazzale & Lina Walker, 2009. "Behavioral Biases in Annuity Choice: An Experiment," Department of Economics Working Papers 2009-01, Department of Economics, Williams College. [Downloadable!]
  5. Kopecky, Karen A. & Koreshkova, Tatyana, 2009. "The Impact of Medical and Nursing Home Expenses and Social Insurance Policies on Savings and Inequality," MPRA Paper 16197, University Library of Munich, Germany. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  6. Kam Ki Tang & Jie Zhang, 2007. "Morbidity, Mortality, Health Expenditures and Annuitization," CESifo Working Paper Series CESifo Working Paper No. , CESifo Group Munich. [Downloadable!]
  7. Fang Yang, 2009. "Consumption over the Life Cycle: How Different is Housing?," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 12(3), pages 423-443, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  8. Mariacristina De Nardi & Eric French & John Bailey Jones, 2009. "Life Expectancy and Old Age Savings," NBER Working Papers 14653, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  9. Olesya Baker & Phil Doctor & Eric French, 2007. "Asset rundown after retirement: the importance of rate of return shocks," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Q II, pages 48-65. [Downloadable!]
  10. Timothy J. Halliday & Hui He & Hao Zhang, 2009. "Health Investment over the Life-Cycle," Working Papers 200910, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  11. Eric French & Mariacristina De Nardi & John Bailey Jones & Olesya Baker & Phil Doctor, 2006. "Right before the end: asset decumulation at the end of life," Economic Perspectives, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, issue Q III, pages 2-13. [Downloadable!]
  12. Gaobo Pang, Mark J. Warshawsk, . "Optimizing the Equity-Bond-Annuity Portfolio in Retirement: The Impact of Uncertain Health Expenses," Research Reports 4, Watson Wyatt Worldwide. [Downloadable!]
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