The health status of people is a precious commodity and central to economic, socio-political, and environmental dimensions of any country. Yet it is often the missing statistic in all general statistics, demographics, and presentations about the portrait of immigrants and natives. In this paper...

This chapter summarizes the recent economic literature on health and long-term care as it relates to population aging. The profound demographic changes taking place in developed countries will require changes in how societies provide and pay for long-term care. Both the supply side and the...

Unmet healthcare needs refer to the situation when individuals fail to use healthcare services identified as a necessity to avoid any health consequences. The COVID-19 pandemic imposed additional challenges for older persons in addressing their healthcare needs, especially in the context of...

We specify a model for the lifetimes of spouses and the dynamic evolution of health, allowing spousal death to have causal effects on the health and mortality of the survivor. We estimate the model using a longitudinal survey that traces many health status aspects over time, and that is linked...

This paper analyzes the impact of health indicators on an individual's trip and mode choices to out-patient care facilities. The study's focus is an out-patient trip to a health care facility, and the source of data is the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) for 2011, 2013...

One explanation for insufficient use of primary care in the U.S. is a lack of trust between patients and providers - particularly along racial lines. We assess the role of racial concordance between patients and medical providers in driving use of preventive care and the implications for patient...

This paper investigates the mechanisms behind the health effects of retirement. Using a Regression Discontinuity Design to exploit financial incentives in the German pension system for identification, I find that retirement improves subjective health status and mental health, while also reducing...

This paper examines the impact of universal, free, and easily accessible primary healthcare on population health as measured by age-specific birth and mortality rates, focusing on a nationwide socialized medicine program implemented in Turkey. The Family Medicine Program (FMP), launched in 2005,...

Home equity is the primary self-funding mechanism for long term services and supports (LTSS). Using data from the relevant waves of the Health and Retirement Study (1996-2010), we exploit the exogenous variation in the form of wealth shocks resulting from the value of housing assets, to examine...