Medicaid was primarily designed to protect and insure the poor against medical shocks. Yet, poorer people tend to live shorter lifespans and incur lower medical expenses before death than richer people. Taking these and other important dimensions of heterogeneity into account, and carefully...

This paper constructs a rich model of saving for retired single people. Our framework allows for bequest motives and heterogeneity in medical expenses and life expectancies. We estimate the model using AHEAD data and the method of simulated moments. The data show that out-of-pocket medical...

Rich people, women, and healthy people live longer. We document that this heterogeneity in life expectancy is large. We use an estimated structural model to assess the impact of life expectancy variation on the elderly’s savings. We find that the differences in life expectancy related to...

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...

Using data from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) and Assets and Health Dynamics of the Oldest Old (AHEAD), this paper presents estimates of the stochastic process that determines both the distribution and dynamics of health costs. We find that the data generating process for health costs...

Virtually all developed countries face projected budget shortfalls for their public pension programs. The shortfalls arise for two reasons. First, populations in developed countries are aging rapidly. Second, until recently older individuals in developed countries have been retiring earlier....

Using an estimable dynamic programming model of retirement behavior, this paper assesses the relative importance of Medicare and Social Security in determining job exit rates at age 65. Of central importance is whether individuals value health insurance benefits not just for the reduction in...

We examine the key components that determine an individual's early career wage growth and how these factors have changed for less skilled workers over the last twenty years. In particular, we examine the relative importance of accumulating work experience as compared to the quality of job...

This paper analyzes the effects of wages and the Social Security System on labor supply over the life cycle. I present a model of labor supply and retirement behavior that includes a saving decision, uncertainty, and a non-negativity constraint on assets. Using data from the Panel Study of...

This chapter discusses identification of common selection models of the labor market. We start with the classic Roy model and show how it can be identified with exclusion restrictions. We then extend the argument to the generalized Roy model, treatment effect models, duration models, search...