The magnitude of the effect that health has on the retirement decision has long been studied. We examine the reverse relationship, whether or not retirement has a direct impact on later-life health. In order to identify the causal relationship, we use unexpected early retirement window offers to...

Most of my research at Yale University School of Medicine over the past several years has focused on identifying older adults at risk of functional decline and disability, identifying events that may precipitate the transition from functional independence to disability, and developing strategies...

I investigate the effect of income on mortality of the pensioners, com- paring three subsequent policy periods in Austria. The pensioners who retired in the second period received 25% lower pension than those in the first period. This reduction in income was removed in the third policy period....

In this paper, we focus on possible causal mechanisms behind the intergenerational transmission of human capital. For this purpose, we use both an adoption and a twin design and study the effect of parents' education on their children's cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills, and health. Our...

This paper provides an econometric evaluation of the impact of two innovative care programs for elderly people with dementia (day-care centers and group-living) on the well-being of the primary caregiver of patients. For this evaluation, we use data from a survey conducted in six European...

This paper analyzes the interplay between early-life conditions and marital status, as determinants of adult mortality. We use individual data from Dutch registers (years 1815-2000), combined with business cycle conditions in childhood as indicators of earlylife conditions. The empirical...

Palliative care is specialized healthcare for anyone who is diagnosed with a serious and life-threatening illness, starting when they get the diagnosis, regardless of the prognosis. Although hospice is a form of palliative care, most palliative care is not end-of-life care or hospice, a common...

The red herring hypothesis contends that the high health care expenditure in old age is caused by proximity to death rather than calendar age. Dissenters point to longitudinal data and claim that health care expenditure age profiles tend to steepen over time. The present paper tests the...

Self-reported measures of health are generally treated as weak measures of respondents' objective health status. On the other hand, most surveys use self-reported health to measure health status and to determine the effects of a range of other socio-economic characteristics of the local...

With ageing populations and a stronger reliance on individual financial decision-making concerning asset portfolios, retirement schemes, pensions and insurances, it becomes increasingly important to understand the determinants of cognitive ability among the elderly. Macro-economic recession and...