IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/6114.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Medical Costs of The Young and Old: A Forty Year Perspective

Author

Listed:
  • David M. Cutler
  • Ellen Meara

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the growth in medical care spending by age over the past 40 years. We show that between 1953 and 1987, medical spending increased disproportionately for infants, those under 1 year, and the elderly, those 65 and older. Annual spending growth for infants was 9.8 percent and growth for the elderly was 8.0 percent compared to 4.7 percent for people aged 1-64. Within the infant and the elderly population, excess spending growth was largely driven by more rapid growth of spending at the top of the medical spending distribution. Aggregate changes in outcomes for infants and the elderly are consistent with these changes in spending growth, but we do not present any causal evidence on this point.

Suggested Citation

  • David M. Cutler & Ellen Meara, 1997. "The Medical Costs of The Young and Old: A Forty Year Perspective," NBER Working Papers 6114, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6114
    Note: AG EH PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w6114.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David M. Cutler & Mark McClellan & Joseph P. Newhouse & Dahlia Remler, 1996. "Are Medical Prices Declining?," NBER Working Papers 5750, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. David Meltzer, 1997. "Accounting for Future Costs in Medical Cost-Effectiveness Analysis," NBER Working Papers 5946, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Cutler, David M, 1995. "The Incidence of Adverse Medical Outcomes under Prospective Payment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 63(1), pages 29-50, January.
    4. Manning, Willard G, et al, 1987. "Health Insurance and the Demand for Medical Care: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 251-277, June.
    5. Meltzer, David, 1997. "Accounting for future costs in medical cost-effectiveness analysis," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 33-64, February.
    6. Joseph P. Newhouse, 1992. "Medical Care Costs: How Much Welfare Loss?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 3-21, Summer.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stefan Felder, 2006. "Lebenserwartung, medizinischer Fortschritt und Gesundheitsausgaben: Theorie und Empirie," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 7(s1), pages 49-73, May.
    2. Ernst R. Berndt & David M. Cutler & Richard Frank & Zvi Griliches & Joseph P. Newhouse & Jack E. Triplett, 2001. "Price Indexes for Medical Care Goods and Services -- An Overview of Measurement Issues," NBER Chapters, in: Medical Care Output and Productivity, pages 141-200, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. David M. Cutler & Mark McClellan & Joseph P. Newhouse, 1998. "Prices and Productivity in Managed Care Insurance," NBER Working Papers 6677, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. David M. Cutler & Ellen Meara, 2000. "The Technology of Birth: Is It Worth It?," NBER Chapters, in: Frontiers in Health Policy Research, Volume 3, pages 33-68, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Hintermann, Beat & Minke, Matthias, 2018. "The value of extending life at its end: Health care allocation in the presence of learning spillovers," Working papers 2018/15, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    6. Jena, Anupam B. & Philipson, Tomas J., 2008. "Cost-effectiveness analysis and innovation," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(5), pages 1224-1236, September.
    7. Jena, Anupam B. & Philipson, Tomas J., 2013. "Endogenous cost-effectiveness analysis and health care technology adoption," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 172-180.
    8. Cutler, David M., 2007. "The lifetime costs and benefits of medical technology," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1081-1100, December.
    9. David M. Cutler & Mark McClellan, 1996. "The Determinants of Technological Change in Heart Attack Treatment," NBER Working Papers 5751, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Carmen Herrero Blanco & Juan D. Moreno Ternero, 2002. "Economic Evaluation Of Newborn Hearing Screening Procedures," Working Papers. Serie AD 2002-06, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
    11. Paal Joranger & Arild Nesbakken & Halfdan Sorbye & Geir Hoff & Arne Oshaug & Eline Aas, 2020. "Survival and costs of colorectal cancer treatment and effects of changing treatment strategies: a model approach," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 21(3), pages 321-334, April.
    12. Pieter H. M. van Baal & Talitha L. Feenstra & Rudolf T. Hoogenveen & G. Ardine de Wit & Werner B. F. Brouwer, 2007. "Unrelated medical care in life years gained and the cost utility of primary prevention: in search of a ‘perfect’ cost–utility ratio," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(4), pages 421-433, April.
    13. Bengt Liljas, 2011. "Welfare, QALYs, and costs – a comment," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(1), pages 68-72, January.
    14. Daron Acemoglu & Amy Finkelstein, 2008. "Input and Technology Choices in Regulated Industries: Evidence from the Health Care Sector," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(5), pages 837-880, October.
    15. Douglas Lundin & Joakim Ramsberg, 2008. "On survival consumption costs – a reply to Nyman," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(2), pages 293-297, February.
    16. Mira Johri & Laura J. Damschroder & Brian J. Zikmund‐Fisher & Peter A. Ubel, 2005. "The importance of age in allocating health care resources: does intervention‐type matter?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 14(7), pages 669-678, July.
    17. Jacques H. Drèze, 1997. "Sur la spécificité économique des soins de santé," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 129(3), pages 1-9.
    18. Gary Becker & Kevin Murphy & Tomas Philipson, 2007. "The Value of Life Near its End and Terminal Care," Levine's Working Paper Archive 122247000000001428, David K. Levine.
    19. Blomqvist, Ake, 1997. "Optimal non-linear health insurance," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 303-321, June.
    20. John A. Nyman, 2006. "More on survival consumption costs in cost‐utility analysis," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(3), pages 319-322, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6114. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.