This paper provides evidence against the hypothesis that elderly individuals with strong bequest motives purchase term life insurance to offset mandatory annuitization by the existing Social Security system. Using new data on elderly households, this study is able to examine ownership of pure...

We examine how wealth shocks, in the form of inheritances, affect the mortality rates, health status and health behaviors of older adults, using data from eight waves of the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS). Our main finding is that bequests do not have substantial effects on health, although...

The majority of elderly Americans who receive long-term care outside of institutions are cared for in part by their children. We have little evidence, however, on the financial and social mechanisms securing the supply of elder care. In recent data on older U.S. families, I find that children...

We explore the consequences for asset pricing of admitting a bequest motive into an otherwise standard overlapping generations model where agents trade equity and perpetual debt securities. Prices of securities are seen to be approximately 50% higher in an economy with bequests as compared to an...

This study used the 2012 and 2014 panels of the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative dataset, to examine the associations between personality traits, generational cohorts, and bequest expectations among elderly households in the United States. The results indicated that...

Older wealthholders spend down assets much more slowly than predicted by classic life-cycle models. This paper introduces health-dependent utility into a model in which preferences for bequests, expenditures when in need of long-term care (LTC), and ordinary consumption combine with health and...

This paper examines how homeownership evolves in old age and around the time of death, using detailed data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to assess the extent to which housing wealth held by older Americans might be used to complement Social Security in the provision of retirement...