IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bcl/bclwop/bclwp189.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Healthy aging and capital accumulation

Author

Listed:
  • Pablo Garcia Sanchez
  • Luca Marchiori
  • Olivier Pierrard

Abstract

We study the effects on capital accumulation from public health in an overlapping generations model. Investing in the health of young individuals raises longevity and lowers frailty, influencing capital accumulation through three main channels. First, since it is tax-financed, public health investment reduces disposable income and the capacity to save (cost channel). Second, it prolongs life expectancy, encouraging individuals to save for old age (longevity channel). Third, it reduces frailty and the need to save to finance long-term care (frailty channel). Longevity and frailty have ambiguous effects on taxation when the government subsidizes long-term care. We analytically derive the economic implications of these health channels and numerically illustrate our findings. Our main result is that although public investment in healthy aging is costly, it can stimulate capital accumulation even without directly affecting productivity. Classification-JEL: H51, I15, O41.

Suggested Citation

  • Pablo Garcia Sanchez & Luca Marchiori & Olivier Pierrard, 2024. "Healthy aging and capital accumulation," BCL working papers 189, Central Bank of Luxembourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:bcl:bclwop:bclwp189
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bcl.lu/en/publications/Working-papers/189/BCLWP189.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Overlapping generations; public health; health channels; capital accumulation.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development
    • O41 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bcl:bclwop:bclwp189. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bclgvlu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.