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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Health status, health shocks, and asset adequacy over retirement years | | Author(s) | Geoffrey L Wallace, Robert Haveman, Barbara Wolfe |
| Journal title | Research on Aging, vol 39, no 1, January 2017 |
| Publisher | Sage, January 2017 |
| Pages | pp 222-248 |
| Source | journals.sagepub.com/home/roa |
| Keywords | Health [elderly] ; Good Health ; Assets [elderly] ; Retirement ; Measurement ; Quantitative studies ; United States of America. |
| Annotation | This article uses data on a sample of retirees drawn from the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to examine changes in health over the retirement years, and to estimate the effects of health changes in retirement on wealth. Using the framework of item response theory, the authors develop a novel measure of health that makes use of multiple indicators of physical health that are available in the HRS. The authors find that large negative shocks to the health of male retirees and their spouses are frequent in retirement, and that when such shocks do occur, recovery to the pre-shock level of health is rare. The authors then use a dynamic panel data model, to estimate short- and long-run effects of changes in health on wealth. While estimated short-run effects are modest, long-run estimates of the impact of health shocks on wealth are large, ranging from a 12% to 20% reduction in wealth by the 10th year, following a permanent one standard deviation decrease in health. This article was first presented at the conference, Social Insurance and Lifecycle Events among Older Americans (held on 7 December 2014), which was sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP). (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-170324206 A |
| Classmark | CC: CD: JD: G3: 3R: 3DQ: 7T |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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