IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedmoi/89237.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Why Does Consumption Fluctuate in Old Age and How Should the Government Insure it?

Author

Abstract

In old age, consumption can fluctuate because of shocks to available resources and because health shocks affect utility from consumption. We find that even temporary drops in income and health are associated with drops in consumption and most of the effect of temporary drops in health on consumption stems from the reduction in the marginal utility from consumption that they generate. More precisely, after a health shock, richer households adjust their consumption of luxury goods because their utility of consuming them changes. Poorer households, instead, adjust both their necessary and luxury consumption because of changing resources and utility from consumption.

Suggested Citation

  • , 2020. "Why Does Consumption Fluctuate in Old Age and How Should the Government Insure it?," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 40, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedmoi:89237
    DOI: 10.21034/iwp.40
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-papers-institute/iwp40.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.21034/iwp.40?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Michael Hurd & Susann Rohwedder, 2009. "Methodological Innovations in Collecting Spending Data: The HRS Consumption and Activities Mail Survey," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 30(Special I), pages 435-459, December.
    2. Amy Finkelstein & Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2013. "What Good Is Wealth Without Health? The Effect Of Health On The Marginal Utility Of Consumption," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11, pages 221-258, January.
    3. James Cloyne & Kilian Huber & Ethan Ilzetzki & Henrik Kleven, 2019. "The Effect of House Prices on Household Borrowing: A New Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(6), pages 2104-2136, June.
    4. Richard Blundell & Jack Britton & Monica Costa Dias & Eric French, 2023. "The Impact of Health on Labor Supply near Retirement," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 58(1), pages 282-334.
    5. Richard Blundell & Hamish Low & Ian Preston, 2013. "Decomposing changes in income risk using consumption data," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 4(1), pages 1-37, March.
    6. Jeanne Commault, 2016. "How Does Nondurable Consumption Respond To Transitory Income Shocks? Reconciling Natural Experiments and Structural Estimations," Working Papers hal-01328904, HAL.
    7. Evans, William N & Viscusi, W Kip, 1991. "Estimation of State-Dependent Utility Functions Using Survey Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 73(1), pages 94-104, February.
    8. Viscusi, W Kip & Evans, William N, 1990. "Utility Functions That Depend on Health Status: Estimates and Economic Implications," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 353-374, June.
    9. James M. Poterba & Steven F. Venti & David A. Wise, 2015. "What Determines End-of-Life Assets? A Retrospective View," NBER Chapters, in: Insights in the Economics of Aging, pages 127-157, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Richard Blundell & Ian Preston, 1998. "Consumption Inequality and Income Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(2), pages 603-640.
    11. R. Anton Braun & Karen A. Kopecky & Tatyana Koreshkova, 2017. "Old, Sick, Alone, and Poor: A Welfare Analysis of Old-Age Social Insurance Programmes," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 580-612.
    12. Costas Meghir & Luigi Pistaferri, 2004. "Income Variance Dynamics and Heterogeneity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(1), pages 1-32, January.
    13. Greg Kaplan & Giovanni L. Violante, 2010. "How Much Consumption Insurance beyond Self-Insurance?," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 53-87, October.
    14. Dirk Krueger & Fabrizio Perri, 2006. "Does Income Inequality Lead to Consumption Inequality? Evidence and Theory -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(1), pages 163-193.
    15. Crawley, Edmund, 2020. "In search of lost time aggregation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    16. French Eric & Jones John Bailey & McCauley Jeremy, 2017. "The Accuracy of Economic Measurement in the Health and Retirement Study," Forum for Health Economics & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 20(2), pages 1-16, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cortes, Darwin & Gallegos, Andrés & Perez Perez, Jorge, 2021. "Expenditure Responses to Adverse Health Shocks: Evidence from a Panel of Colombian Households," SocArXiv vh2qa_v1, Center for Open Science.
    2. Bertrand Achou & Philippe De Donder & Franca Glenzer & Minjoon Lee & Marie-Louise Leroux, 2023. "At Home versus in a Nursing Home: Long-term Care Settings and Marginal Utility," CIRANO Working Papers 2023s-14, CIRANO.
    3. Advani, Arun & Summers, Andy, 2022. "Measuring and taxing top incomes and wealth," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1403, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    4. Philippe De Donder & Marie‐Louise Leroux, 2021. "Long term care insurance with state‐dependent preferences," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(12), pages 3074-3086, December.
    5. Svetlana Pashchenko & Ponpoje (Poe) Porapakkarm & Mariacristina De Nardi, 2017. "The Lifetime Costs of Bad Health," 2017 Meeting Papers 533, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. Richard Foltyn & Jonna Olsson, 2024. "Subjective life expectancies, time preference heterogeneity, and wealth inequality," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(3), pages 699-736, July.
    7. Cortes, Darwin & Gallegos, Andrés & Perez Perez, Jorge, 2021. "The Spending Responses to Adverse Health Shocks: Evidence from a Panel of Colombian Households," SocArXiv vh2qa, Center for Open Science.
    8. Ghosh, Anisha & Theloudis, Alexandros, 2023. "Consumption Partial Insurance in the Presence of Tail Income Risk," Other publications TiSEM c8da0a17-57cb-40bf-ab61-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Bonekamp, Johan & Wouterse, Bram, 2023. "Do different shocks in health matter for wealth?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    10. David Sturrock & Stefan Groot & Jan Möhlmann, 2022. "Wealth, gifts, and estate planning at the end of life," CPB Discussion Paper 442, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard Blundell & Margherita Borella & Jeanne Commault & Mariacristina De Nardi, 2024. "Old Age Risks, Consumption, and Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 114(2), pages 575-613, February.
    2. Theloudis, Alexandros, 2021. "Consumption inequality across heterogeneous families," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    3. Etheridge, Ben, 2015. "A test of the household income process using consumption and wealth data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 129-157.
    4. Richard Blundell & Luigi Pistaferri & Itay Saporta-Eksten, 2016. "Consumption Inequality and Family Labor Supply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(2), pages 387-435, February.
    5. Ghosh, Anisha & Theloudis, Alexandros, 2023. "Consumption Partial Insurance in the Presence of Tail Income Risk," Other publications TiSEM c8da0a17-57cb-40bf-ab61-6, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    6. Karen Clay & Peter Juul Egedes & Casper Worm Hansen & Peter Sandholt Jensen, 2018. "Controlling Tuberculosis? Evidence from the Mother of all Community-Wide Health Experiments," Discussion Papers 18-03, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    7. Crawley, Edmund & Theloudis, Alexandros, 2024. "Income Shocks and their Transmission into Consumption," Discussion Paper 2024-012, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    8. Estelle Dauchy & Francisco Navarro-Sanchez & Nathan Seegert, 2021. "Taxation and Inequality: Active and Passive Channels," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 42, pages 156-177, October.
    9. Meghir, Costas & Pistaferri, Luigi, 2011. "Earnings, Consumption and Life Cycle Choices," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 9, pages 773-854, Elsevier.
    10. Jonathan Heathcote & Kjetil Storesletten & Giovanni L. Violante, 2014. "Consumption and Labor Supply with Partial Insurance: An Analytical Framework," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(7), pages 2075-2126, July.
    11. Edmund Crawley & Andreas Kuchler, 2020. "Consumption Heterogeneity: Micro Drivers and Macro Implications," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2020-005, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    12. Iourii Manovskii & Dmytro Hryshko & Moira Daly, 2015. "Reconciling Estimates of Earnings Processes in Growth Rates and Levels," 2015 Meeting Papers 1395, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Manuel Sanchez & Felix Wellschmied, 2020. "Modeling Life-Cycle Earnings Risk with Positive and Negative Shocks," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 37, pages 103-126, July.
    14. Andrés Erosa & Luisa Fuster & Gueorgui Kambourov, 2016. "Towards a Micro-Founded Theory of Aggregate Labour Supply," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(3), pages 1001-1039.
    15. Padmaja Ayyagari & Daifeng He, 2017. "The Role of Medical Expenditure Risk in Portfolio Allocation Decisions," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(11), pages 1447-1458, November.
    16. Tom Krebs & Moritz Kuhn & Mark L. J. Wright, 2015. "Human Capital Risk, Contract Enforcement, and the Macroeconomy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(11), pages 3223-3272, November.
    17. Pierre Picard, 2016. "A Note on Health Insurance under Ex Post Moral Hazard," Risks, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-9, October.
    18. Octave Jokung & Serge Macé, 2013. "Long-term health investment when people underestimate their adaptation to old age-related health problems," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 14(6), pages 1003-1013, December.
    19. Amy Finkelstein & Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2009. "Approaches to Estimating the Health State Dependence of the Utility Function," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(2), pages 116-121, May.
    20. Bertrand Achou & Philippe De Donder & Franca Glenzer & Minjoon Lee & Marie-Louise Leroux, 2023. "At Home versus in a Nursing Home: Long-term Care Settings and Marginal Utility," CIRANO Working Papers 2023s-14, CIRANO.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General
    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D14 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Saving; Personal Finance
    • E20 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H20 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - General
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedmoi:89237. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Kate Hansel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cfrbmus.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.