The baby boom generation's entry into old age has led to an unprecedented increase in the elderly population. The social and economic effects of this shift are significant, and in Research Findings in the Economics of Aging, a group of leading researchers takes an eclectic view of the subject....

This book investigates several important issues in the economics of aging, including the accumulation of wealth and the relationship between health and financial prosperity. Examining the changes in savings behavior and investment priorities in the United States over the past few decades,...

The fraction of the population over age sixty-five in many developed countries is projected to rise, in some cases sharply, in coming decades. This has drawn growing interest to research on the health and economic circumstances of individuals as they age. Many individuals are retiring from paid...

The oldest members of the Baby-Boomer generation are now crossing the threshold of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare with extensive and significant implications for these programs’ overall spending and fiscal sustainability. Yet the aging of the Baby Boomers is just one part of the...

One of the most well-established relationships in the economics of aging is that between health and wealth. Yet this relationship is also changing in conjunction with a rapidly aging population as well as a broad evolution in how people live later in life. Building on findings from earlier...

Integrating the health services and insurance industries (HMOs) could lower expenditure by reducing either the quantity of services or unit price. We compare the treatment of heart attacks and newly diagnosed chest pain in HMOs and traditional plans in two data sets. The nature of these health...

This paper reviews the evidence on the well-known positive association between socioeconomic status and health. We focus on four dimensions of socioeconomic status -- education, financial resources, rank, and race and ethnicity -- paying particular attention to how the mechanisms linking health...

This paper examines the effect of government nursing home policies on institutionalization rates and support for the elderly in the community. We combine data from the National Long Term Care Survey with information on state policies to estimate these effects. We examine two state policies for...

This paper examines the causes and consequences of reductions in cardiovascular disease mortality, and in particular heart attack mortality, over the past several decades. Analysis of data from Medicare and review of the clinical literature indicate that a large share of the recent decline in...

This paper examines the importance of sectoral reallocation and cyclical unemployment; in the postwar US economy. It develops a new measure of reallocation shocks based on the variance of industry stock market excess returns over time, termed cross section volatility. Data on unemployment and...