The authors use a calibrated stochastic life-cycle model of endogenous health spending, asset accumulation and retirement to investigate the causes behind the increase in health spending and life expectancy over the period 1965-2005. They estimate that technological change along with the...

Population aging is not a looming crisis of the futureÑit is already here. The ultimate impact of population aging on our standard of living in the future depends a great deal on how long people choose to work before they retire from the labor force. Here there is reason for optimism. In this...

Money parents give their adult children may be important for the financing of a child's education or a first home, relaxing binding credit constraints or responding to a transitory income shock. Financial transfers however, may extend economic disparities across generations if the wealthy...

Family composition has changed dramatically over the past 25 years. Divorce rates increased and remarriage rates declined. While considerable research established a link between marriage and earnings, far less is empirically understood about the effect of marriage on wealth although wealth is an...

Understanding of the substantial disparity in health between low and high socioeconomic status (SES) groups is hampered by the lack of a sufficiently comprehensive theoretical framework to interpret empirical facts and to predict yet untested relations. The authors present a life-cycle model...

Recent legislative and regulatory activity related to investment advice in 401(k) plans has focused on the issue of self-dealing. In this paper, the authors develop a framework that addresses questions of self- dealing based on the direct-marketing model introduced by Inderst and Ottaviani...

Some studies suggest that people can maintain their cognitive abilities through "mental exercise." This has not been unequivocally proven. Retirement is associated with a large change in a person's daily routine and environment. In this paper, the authors propose two mechanisms how retirement...

Indonesia has been undergoing a major health and nutrition transition over the past twenty or more years and there has begun a significant aging of the population as well. In this paper the authors focus on documenting major changes in the health of the population aged 45 years and older, since...

To analyze the effect of health on work, many studies use a simple self-assessed health measure based upon a question such as "do you have an impairment or health problem limiting the kind or amount of work you can do?" A possible drawback of such a measure is the possibility that different...