In several OECD countries, public pay-as-you-go financed pension systems have undergone major reforms in which future retirement benefit promises have been scaled down. A consequence of these reforms is that especially in countries with a tight tax-benefit linkage, the retirement benefit claims...

In response to the growing burden of obesity, public primary prevention programs against obesity have been widely recommended. Several studies estimated the cost effects of diabetes prevention trials for different countries and found that diabetes prevention can be cost-effective. Nevertheless,...

The empirical relationship between income and longevity has been addressed by a large number of studies, but most were confined to men. In particular, administrative data from public pension systems are less reliable for women because of the loose relationship between own earnings and household...

It is still an open question whether increasing life expectancy as such is causing higher health care expenditures (HCE) in a population. According to the 'red herring' hypothesis, the positive correlation between age and HCE is exclusively due to the fact that mortality rises with age and a...

We report results of a survey of a representative sample of the German population in which respondents were asked for their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for either an extension of their life or an improvement in their health corresponding to a gain of one quality-adjusted life year (QALY). While one...