This paper reports the first effort to use data to evaluate how new information, acquired through exogenous health shocks, affects people's longevity expectations. We find that smokers react differently to health shocks than do those who quit smoking or never smoked. These differences, together...

Wage hedonic models are estimated with the Health and Retirement Study to measure the risk-wage tradeoffs (value of statistical lives) for older workers. The analysis explicitly allows for multiple employment states, including retirement, using a multinomial selection model. The results suggest...

Using four waves of the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) this paper tests whether longevity expectations predict actual mortality at the individual level. The results suggest longevity expectations do predict mortality reasonably well. Serious health shocks and new activity limitations do...

This paper reports the first test of how exogenous health shocks impact people's longevity expectations. The analysis exploits the panel structure of the Health and Retirement Study and tests whether smokers, former smokers and those who never smoked react differently to serious, smoking related...