In a simple 2-period model of relative income under uncertainty, higher comparison income for the younger cohort can signal higher or lower expected lifetime relative income, and hence either increase or decrease well-being. With data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and the British...

Orson Wells made Citizen Kane, his greatest movie, when he was 25 years old; Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fallingwater, his most famous house, when he was 70. Contrasts as great as this raise the question of whether there is a general explanation of when in their lives great innovators are most...

We consider assets when individuals were last observed prior to death in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and trace assets backwards to the age when these individuals were first observed. For most individuals, assets in the last year observed (LYO) were very similar to assets in the first...

We consider how age-health profiles differ by demographic characteristics such as education, race, and ethnicity. A key feature of the analysis is the joint estimation of health and mortality to correct for the effect of mortality selection on observed age-health profiles. The model also allows...

About 20% of German workers retire on disability pensions. Disability pensions provide fairly generous benefits for those who are not already age-eligible for an old-age pension and who are deemed unable to work for health reasons. In this paper, we use two sets of individual survey data to...

Comparing self-reports to administrative data records on diagnosis and prescription drug use, we find that survey respondents under-report mental health conditions 36% of the time when asked about diagnosis and about 20% of the time when asked about prescription drug use. Survey respondents are...

I show that the trend towards single households among older nonmarried women, the majority of whom were widows, has been ongoing only since 1940 and investigate the factors that fostered the rise in separate living quarters since mid-century by examining the impact of Old Age Assistance on...

The Medicare trust funds face huge prospective deficits by the end of this decade.This paper discusses trends in six areas that bear on the Medicare problem: the number of the elderly, their health status, use of medical care, labor force participation, income, and living arrangements. Among the...

Some important novelists have written a great novel early in their careers and have produced lesser works thereafter, whereas others have improved their work gradually over long periods and have made their major contributions late in their lives. Which of these patterns a novelist follows...