Understanding of the substantial disparity in health between low and high socioeconomic status (SES) groups is hampered … disparities in health by SES. In our model, lifestyle factors, working conditions, retirement, living conditions and curative care … are mechanisms through which SES, health and mortality are related. Our model predicts a widening and possibly a …

This paper provides a closed-form solution for the health capital model of health demand. The results are exploited in … model, the pure consumption model and a combination of both types of models. Given the plausible assumptions that (i) health … declines with age and that (ii) the health capital stock at death is lower than the health capital stock needed for eternal …

Aging humans adapt to their worsening state of health and old people are usually happier than estimated by young … individuals. In this paper we investigate how adaptation to a deteriorating state of health affects health spending, life … adaptation generally increases the value of life (by about 2 to 5 percent), its impact on health behavior and longevity depends …

We present a generalized solution to Grossman's model of health capital (1972), relaxing the widely used assumption … that individuals can adjust their health stock instantaneously to an "optimalʺ level without adjustment costs. The Grossman … model then predicts the existence of a health threshold above which individuals do not demand medical care. Our generalized …