The authors analyze the effect of the availability of post-retirement health insurance on early retirement behavior of men using data from the 1984, 1986, and 1988 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). They extend previous static models of retirement to account for...

We consider a compelling research question raised by the growing prevalence of overweight among adolescents: do overweight adolescents incur greater health care expenditures than adolescents of normal weight? To address this question, we use data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS)...

This study examined the effects of education, income, and wealth on medical care expenditures in two Medicare managed care plans. The study also sought to elucidate the pathways through which socioeconomic status (SES) affects expenditures, including preferences for health and medical care and...

The relationship between neighborhoods of residence in young adulthood and health in mid-to-late life in the United States are examined using the 1968–2005 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The sample consists of persons who were aged 20–30 in 1968 and are followed for a...

We consider two compelling research questions raised by the increased prevalence of overweight among adolescents. First, what factors explain variation in adolescent bodyweight and the likelihood of being overweight? Next, do overweight adolescents incur greater health care expenditures compared...

The authors analyze the effect of the availability of post-retirement health insurance on early retirement behavior of men using data from the 1984, 1986, and 1988 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). They extend previous static models of retirement to account for...

We address long-standing problems in measuring health care prices by estimating two medical care price indices. The first, a Service Price Index, prices specific medical services, as does the current CPI. The second, a Cost of Living Index, measures the net valuation of treating a health...

The tradeoff between an insurer's or medical provider's incentives to select good risks and to produce efficiently is governed by the supply-price analog to the demand-price tradeoff between moral hazard and risk aversion. Under a variety of models the optimum supply price is a mixture of...

The papers in this symposium focus on two major issues of health economics in the context of President Clinton's Health Security Act: cost containment and labor market effects of financing insurance. The act proposes to limit public and private spending; a key issue is the extent to which,...